The Hematic
by Ohtze
Summary: It was imperative, Tommy had said, that they arrived in the Third Age. The Third Age was the best age: that sweet spot in the timeline where they could do the most good without destroying the future. Lucy came for her own reasons, most of them selfish, but Lucy was there, Tommy wasn't, and golden-haired Glorfindel had forgotten to kill the balrog.
1. Tommy

Chapter I: Tommy

* * *

"Are you ready?"

When the dust had settled and the screaming had stopped, Lucy thought maybe, probably – most definitely, if she were a rational human being – that she should have said _no_. That maybe – had she been thinking clearly about the time that came _after_ – she would have known this entire excursion was an absolutely awful idea. Her judgement was impaired, she knew. It had always been impaired, and by now it was a long, deep-seated problem that her parents despaired over.

Maybe, she decided with the gravity of an obituary announcement, she should have aimed for something _tangible_.

Often, Lucy's grasp on reality and unreality was tenuous at best, the two intermingling together so erroneously that she suffered from frequent migraines. During times like these, where her subconscious and the real world bled together, her mind would detach. The sensation was similar to pins and needles tingling along the inside of a phantom limb that wasn't there, or one that had never existed.

Lucy hadn't thought anything would happen, really; nothing but their brains painting the pavement and limbs like rubber. The disassociation was addictive in an odd, off-putting way. It brought out a sort of fearlessness; the kind of fearlessness that came from chemical signals getting mixed up in the brain. But they were here now, the **two** of them, in a place that shouldn't have existed. Already, Lucy regretted it.

The had landed somewhere deep in the mountains, her and Tommy; huge slate gray peaks turning gold in the sunlight that rose up into the cloud cover so high even eagles couldn't soar above them. Emerging onto a cliff top would have been perfect, but they had been especially unlucky, expelled from nothingness into a pocket of air over twenty feet above a jagged, pernicious slope. It had taken less than a second for the two of them to start falling.

Lucy's leg had broken in three different places, and one of her lower right ribs had fractured. Tommy had fallen head first, her skull splitting open like a rotten cantaloupe left out in the sun. Her blood had splattered against the stone steppes like so much red paint, brains on the pavement, and Lucy had screamed. She had screamed until her throat was raw and there was foam at her mouth.

Still, there was nobody that heard her.

In the time _before_, there had been no magical portal through which to fall through. No period of blackness before the two of them woke up in a field of fragrant flowers beneath a cornucopia of stars. There had been no elves and no hobbits, no kindly grey wizards greeting quirky young time travelers who became the talk of the town.

There had just been this:

Two girls standing on the edge of a seven-story building, their matching black patent shoes poking out over the edge of the rooftop as they had looked down at the street below them. Tommy's hand had been firm in hers, small and short and slightly clammy. Her fingernails were painted the prettiest shade of buttercup yellow. Lucy had always adored the color.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" She asked. Even though they'd been friends forever, the ground beneath them had been looming ominously. Lucy wasn't great with physics, but she was fairly certain if they wanted to die on impact they would need a taller building.

Tommy had nodded, her cheeks flushed as her short brown hair spiraled around her face, drawn into errant whorls by the wind. Beneath them a police car barreled past, sirens blaring.

"Yeah." Tommy had said. "Yeah, I'm sure it will work. We'll make it."

Lucy hadn't thought it would work – you couldn't fall into a place that didn't exist, after all – but Tommy had insisted that jumping was the only way they would find it. Lucy had played along, as she'd been there for different reasons. She had a lot of reasons, most of them nameless.

She and Tommy were alike in many ways. They wore matching gray sweaters and matching black shoes and went to the same nondescript school in the east end of the city. The only real difference between them was that Lucy felt too little and Tommy felt too much. _Dollface_, the boys crooned whenever Lucy walked by. _The Whore and the Hag_, the girls at their school called them.

Lucy ignored it, because she was an awful sort of person in an odd sort of way, and rarely did she feel anything beyond annoyance. But Tommy – Tommy had never forgotten which side of the dichotomy she fell on.

"I want to be beautiful." Tommy had said one night through her tears as they huddled beside the stairs to the subway, the words hissing painfully through her chattering teeth. Her gray sweater had been stained with splatters of ink, a gift from their classmates. "I want to **be **someone."

"You're someone to me." Lucy had argued. It wasn't enough for Tommy.

"I'm going to change it all." She said. "I'm going to save them."

Lucy hadn't been so sure, but she went along with it and played her part dutifully. But this – these mountains so tall that even eagles couldn't soar above them – this was Tommy's world. Her desires and dreams, manifested into reality.

On the rooftop, the wind had been cool against their bare legs, Lucy's calves prickling with goose bumps beneath the hem of her pleated skirt. Across Tommy's shoulder, her best friend had thrown her worn-out tweed bag that she'd stubbornly clung to since middle school. Inside the bag were her precious books. Her keys to the kingdom, Tommy had jokingly said once.

"I'll need it." Tommy told her, right before they jumped. "For when we get to the other side. I need something to remember all their names and all the places. They have lots of names, you know. Long names. You should remember them too."

"I love you." Lucy had said instead. It was the truth.

Tommy had squeezed her hand, her buttercup yellow nails scraping along Lucy's plain ones. The wind had been cold. Lucy loved Tommy, but Tommy loved another. The one that lived in her books.

"See you on the other side." Tommy said.

And they had jumped.

* * *

It was vitally important, Tommy had told her, that they arrived in the Third Age.

The First Age was too dangerous, the second too convoluted, and by the time the fourth rolled around they would be too late to stop anything, much less make any significant difference. Lucy hadn't paid attention to her at the time, because it had been Tommy's dream and Tommy's desire. She hadn't thought anything would come of it but their blood striking out against the pavement and two closed-case coffins: an end to the endless malaise that constantly seemed to plague her.

Tommy had believed it would work with a passion that was terrifying, dragging out maps and going over all her dog-eared books with a fine-toothed comb until the paperbacks were falling apart and fraying around the edges. The Third Age, Tommy had said with a feverish sort of excitement, was the best age for them, and definitely the safest. There were humans there. Lots of humans and lots of information, so she would be able to accurately predict what was happening. Going back too far would change too many things. Who knew how many deaths it would result in.

"The ideal time for us to land is a week before Gandalf arrives at Bag End, when he visits Bilbo." Tommy had said, biting her bottom lip in consternation. "The first time, I mean, when Thorin's party comes to the Shire. I'd like to arrive later, but by that time it's too late to stop anything. Too many people die."

Tommy always wanted to be the hero. She wanted to **be** there, to do something. Lucy had fueled her delusions with the all the delicacy of a sociopath on a bender. Only once did she try to stop it.

"You're perfect the way you are." She had said one night as they had packed up their books. "You don't need to be anyone's hero but mine." It hadn't been enough for Tommy. It never was. This was Tommy's dream, Tommy's obsession and Tommy's desire. Only Tommy was dead now – dead in a fall that was supposed to kill them both, dead like dirt – with her brains splattered across the stone slope and her bones built like rubber.

Lucy was alone now; trapped on a sleet gray mountain with her leg broken in three different places. Her only companions were Tommy's corpse and Tommy's books. It was a sunny day out, and the wind was crisp and chilly without a tree line to protect her. The mountain slope – bare of anything but rock and snow – smelt of ice and iron.

If Lucy looked farther down, she could see vibrant green meadows along the base of the mountains, climbing upwards into the undulating foothills. The mountains were in a circle, and inside that circle there was a massive plain stretching out before her in an ocean of grass. A ravine cut along the side of it, heading southwest, and in the center of that circle there was yet another stone plateau upon which a white city sat.

The atmosphere was too fresh, too clean, and too thick. It was like breathing in miasma, and Lucy began gasping, her lungs struggling to keep up with the influx of oxygen-rich air. She didn't know where she was, and she couldn't move with her broken leg. All Lucy could think about was Tommy's brains on the rocks and Tommy's blood on the stones; Tommy's books and maps and her dreams and desires scattered all across the mountain.

Slowly, Lucy began dragging herself down the slope towards her best friend. It wasn't that far – only ten feet or so – but it felt like a mile, as the edge of the stones were sharp and brittle. They cut her palms open, and by the end of it they were cross-hatched like ham, the gashes raw and oozing and weeping.

Lucy didn't talk, because she wasn't one for words – they seemed unnecessary, especially now – but she did start to cry. They were the fat, silent tears of her childhood; the ones she was prone to before the malaise came. Everything smelt overwhelmingly of frigidly fresh air, mixed with the heady scent of Tommy's blood. She tried to walk, but it wasn't possible with the breaks in her leg, so Lucy simply dragged her mangled limb behind her. Her hands scrabbled fitfully against loose stone, her fingers smudged with dirt and her nails broken. It was hard to breathe. Every time she took in a shuddering breath, the pain was so blinding she saw specks of white floating across her field of vision. She had a horrible feeling there something was poking through her skin beneath her shirt – most likely a rib – but she was too focused on her best friend to look down and check it. Above her, the eagles were soaring.

The giant birds appeared no bigger than sparrows, they were so high up, but if Lucy squinted she could make out the gleam of golden-brown hued feathers. As she stared, one of the eagles screeched and another veered off, diving in the direction of the circular white city sitting in the center of the valley. The city was layered like a wedding cake, each level of the structure appearing smaller than the last. Its delicate spires stretched upwards, pointing towards the crystalline blue sky.

When she eventually reached Tommy, Lucy collapsed beside her, her face wet with tears and darkened with smudges of dirt as she struggled to pull herself into a sitting position. She wanted to place her friend's head on her lap. Tommy had been pretty in life – prettier than Lucy, in her opinion – but no one agreed with her. Tommy's hair had been a short, nondescript brown, her features forgettable, but she had the prettiest lips Lucy had ever seen – lips that she always wanted to kiss, but didn't. Neither of them were tall, but Tommy had been smart and infinitely kinder. She was easily hurt by the words of others.

"Tommy." Lucy said eventually. Her voice came out as a croak. Tommy's gaze was endless now, her eyes open and unseeing. "Tommy, wake up. We made it. It's time to save the world."

Tommy didn't answer.

Lucy swallowed hard. The taste of the failure coating her tongue was a combination of grit and dirt and saliva. She had never thought they would make it – it was the only reason she'd jumped – but even in the deepest, darkest corners of her mind, she had still harbored daydreams and fantasies. She wanted Tommy to be a prophet: for the girl to love Lucy like Lucy loved her. No one else would have know her like Lucy did, and they would have kept their secrets hidden between them.

Those secrets were scattered now, free and open for the taking. The pages fluttered in the wind, Tommy's books and maps, mingling with her frantic notes: the ones with the little doodles scribbled in the margins. This was Tommy's dream, but Tommy wasn't here anymore.

_Not mine, _Lucy wanted to scream, _not my place, _but didn't.

There was a void inside her, growing larger and hungry to be filled. The silence was deafening. Trying to ignore it – desperate to ignore it, and irrationally **angry** – Lucy grabbed the nearest book and began methodically shredding it. She grit her teeth, crumpling up the remains and tossing them down the mountain slope to be lost between the razor sharp crags. In front of her far down in the valley, the white city shimmered like a slab of marble, its spires encrusted with beams of light.

It was a grand city, a vast city, and if she had been feeling less detached and swamped with despair Lucy might have found it breathtaking. Even still, it wasn't familiar to her in the slightest. Tommy had said there would be a white city in this world. The white capital of Gondor, with its white tree and its white guards and its seven white rings rising upwards. She had told Lucy about the Kingdom of Men with its ill-fated King; about a sword shattered by the demigod named Sauron, and Isildur's corpse left to rot on the banks of the river Anduin.

"That's where we need to go." Tommy had said. "To Gondor. It's the heart of everything, where everyone gathers. The elves wont take us seriously, but humans will. We're their kind."

"So?"

"We go there and we'll have access to everything. Think about it, Lucy. We can change the **world**."

But this wasn't Tommy's white city. It was another city, one that sat upon a hill in the middle of a valley. Lucy had never paid attention to Tommy's lessons, nor the geography, so she didn't know the name of it. She was going to die here, she knew. Just slowly and in greater agony.

Hands shaking with rage and slow-building hysteria, Lucy shred the first book, and then another, her breaths turning more and more ragged as she tried to hold back the hurt that was building inside her chest. The pages fluttered downwards, yellowed and aged. When she got to the third book Lucy stopped, choking on a sob. Her voice was as mangled as her leg. She couldn't destroy it.

It was Tommy's favorite; a single volume with a dragon guarding a mound of gold etched upon the cover. It was the first book of the series Tommy had read, and the one that began her obsession.

"I want to go there." Tommy had told her one lazy summer afternoon, before people had started calling her ugly and putting pins on her chair. Lucy was still wearing short skirts and short sleeves then, as she hadn't yet found salvation in the edge of a razor. Tommy had pointed to a page in the book, the words appearing like partially smudged squiggles beneath her blunt finger. It was a passage about an elf-king that lived in a forest, talking to a dwarf-lord about a city inside a mountain and the dragon that dwelt there.

"See this? This is Thranduil, and he's a Sindar. Oropher was his father."

Lucy had frowned at the page where Tommy's short finger was pointed, thoroughly uninterested.

"I don't see anything about an _Oropher_, whatever that is."

"That's because he's in another book. _The Silmarillion_." Tommy had said matter-of-factly. "Honestly, I wish Thranduil wasn't in this book either. He's not how elves should be."

"What'd you mean?"

Tommy wrinkled her nose, folding the cover of the book back over itself so it fit snugly between her hands. "Wiser, I guess. Less angry. They're supposed to be everything humans aren't. That's what makes them so great."

"Nobody's perfect."

"They are. That's why it's a tragedy that so many of them died. Why they had to leave Middle Earth. It isn't fair. You'll see what I mean when I show you the other books."

The books were ragged now, the words fading from some of the pages, but there were doodles in the margins, some of them new. Little sketches and scribbles, complete with Tommy's hand-written notes as she prepared for their trip to oblivion. On the first page written in crisp blue-black ink were four short words in Tommy's messy scrawl, placed next to a heart:

_Tommy and Lucy Forever._

Immediately Lucy broke down and began bawling.

She cried for herself first, because she was only human. She was sixteen and all alone and hurting in places she'd never hurt before. Lucy cried because she was lost; because she didn't recognize the towering gray mountains turning gold in the sunlight or the sparkling white city far in the distance. Mostly, Lucy just cried over Tommy.

Tommy, who loved buttercup yellow and banana chocolate chip muffins. Tommy, who'd been teased and tormented because she didn't look the way she was supposed to, and no one had ever let her forget it.

Tommy, beloved Tommy, who'd been so desperate to escape she'd jumped off the edge of a seven-story building, taking unhinged, dead-eyed Lucy with her.

Lucy cried and she cried, and when the snot and the tears coating her face combined into a singular mess, she finally dropped the novel. Her chest hurt and her lungs were burning, worked raw from her sobs. Wiping her nose on the cuff of her sweater, Lucy slowly sank to the ground and lay on her side, curling around her friend's body as she waited patiently for death to claim her. Eventually she rolled onto her back to watch the eagles. It wouldn't take long, Lucy thought.

She was bleeding too, albeit sluggishly, and it was cold on the mountain slope. The wind chill chapped her lips and bare legs and fingers until Lucy couldn't feel them. The world was spinning, the sun bright overhead. Against her cheek, Tommy's beautiful brown hair felt wonderful and soft and smelt like bathwater.

"I have to be clean," Tommy had said as she had scrubbed her hair dry with a towel, only hours before they had jumped. Lucy had watched her from the couch, her hands resting limply in her lap. "We should both be clean before the jump. You don't know where we'll land. It might be awhile before we're able to take a bath."

Slowly, as her limbs became numb, Lucy's mind detached from her body. She lost herself in memory: the good memories, the ones worth keeping. It was a comfortable feeling. A familiar not-feeling devoid of emotion, and one that she coveted.

When they arrived, Lucy was barely able to register the footsteps.

The footsteps sounded like nothing at first, because they **were** nothing: only the mournful droll of the wind whistling in between the peaks of the encircling mountains. Closer still, she could hear the rustle of her long brown hair brushing against Tommy's short uneven locks. Nearby, there was the occasional trill of a sparrow and the bleating of a goat. Above her the eagles circled, spiraling inwards like vultures.

_Maybe they are vultures_, Lucy thought, _come to pick over the flesh of my corpse_. It was fitting end to her short life. There was a loud crunch of feet over gravel, almost purposeful in nature. Lucy would have ignored it had the shadow not fallen upon her.

The shadow spoke, its words sounding angry. It was only then that Lucy came back to herself, her senses grounding until she could feel the pebbles digging into her back; the way the wind pressed her sweater into the curves of her upper body. When she looked up, she saw a man's face that seemed human in all the right ways, only it was terrifyingly alien in others.

The stranger had two eyes, two arms and two legs, but his skin was so pale and smooth that it seemed to glow, bordering on paper thin and translucent. He was staggeringly tall, and so very slender. When the man moved it was downright eerie, like he was gliding over the ground and through it instead of interacting. Lucy's eyes widened in surprise, her mouth opening slightly before closing again. The stranger's hair was black, his eyes a pale gray. When he drew back his bow part of his hood fell aside, the motion revealing an ear pointed along the tip of the cartilage.

It was one of Tommy's elves; the Perfect Ones she'd wanted to save, only he didn't look like the mental image her friend had created. There was something feral about the way the creature moved, seething with deep-seated anger.

_Look Tommy_, Lucy wanted to say. _Look. We've found them. _

There were three other elves standing behind the first one, their arrows notched. Each of them was dressed in dark blue and black and purple. Their bows were as tall as they were, the wood of them a blinding white.

_Green, _Lucy thought. _They're supposed to be wearing __**green**__. That's what Tommy said. _

"Esta ar thel." The first elf commanded, near-spitting the words.

His bow was drawn, the arrow notched and pointed at her chest. Slowly Lucy rolled to her side, coughing as she forced herself into a semi-seated position. The dark-haired elf let her, but when she reached for the book, he spat out a hissing word and darted forward, kicking it aside with his foot and pointing the arrow directly at her temple.

"Esta ar thel!" He repeated.

Lucy couldn't help but think that if she had planned for the _after_ – beyond the closed-case coffins and blood on the pavement and sirens wailing – she would have known what the elf was saying. Tommy would have known. Tommy **always** knew.

"I have to learn Sindar." She'd told Lucy one night, feverishly flipping through her notes from the printed pages of an online dictionary. Lucy had listlessly sucked on a lollipop, fulfilling a sugar craving for no other reason than that she was bored. "You never know when you might need it." Tommy continued. "The Common Tongue might not even be English."

Lucy looked at the elf, then slowly blinked, clenching her fingers before relaxing them again. She'd made it. She'd made it to Tommy's dream world, only she didn't want to be there anymore. She never did.

"Esta ar thel!" The creature yelled, his mouth twisting into a grimace. Lucy didn't have an answer. She had questions, though. Questions about Tommy, about a white city that wasn't the one she wanted. Slowly, through the haze of pain and the mental detachment, Tommy's plan – their plan – was coming back to her in bits and pieces. It was important, Tommy had told her with all the severity of a soothsayer, that they arrived in the Third Age. The Third Age was the best age, the place where they could do the most good and the least amount of damage.

Lucy said the first thing that came to mind. The only thing she could remember, really. The thing that Tommy had wanted to stop.

"Where's Sauron?" She asked.

The elf turned white as a sheet, his expression morphing in fury. He moved faster than Lucy could track, the end of his bow cracking loudly across her temple.

The world was spinning, and someone was yelling. The blow was brutal, sending Lucy sprawling. Tommy's blood was on her hands, the stone slope cool against her feverish cheek. Lucy's ears were ringing, her senses fading as everything around her began to blur together.

Someone kicked her hard in the chest, and there was a wet _crack_ and a sudden blinding lance of pain as their foot connected. The world abruptly dialed out, the ringing in Lucy's ears fading to silence.

In the void of unconsciousness, there was nothing. Not even thoughts of Tommy.

* * *

**Author's Note**

I've agonized over where to put this story: whether I should place it in _The Hobbit_ category, _The Lord of The Rings,_ or _The Silmarillion_, as it contains elements of all three and doesn't fit neatly into a single crossover. Eventually I decided on posting it here. For now it best fits the character's intentions and the tropes I'm trying to tackle, but if the story starts veering off in another direction I'll move it to the appropriate section. Studying Sindarin has never been my strong point, so while I will try my best there will be mistakes. Anyone who sees any errors – or any mistakes in general – please don't hesitate to inform me. I'm a stickler for grammar.

A general word of warning: I always write M, and with that rating there comes certain expectations that most readers should be familiar with. Suffice to say, things will be dark. This is the only time that I'll mention it.

* * *

**Glossary**

Esta ar thel – _N__ame and purpose_


	2. Dungeon Crawl

Chapter II: Dungeon Crawl

* * *

The first time it became apparent there was something wrong with Lucy was when Annette lost her hair.

Lucy had always been an obsessive girl. Quiet, and pretty by most people's standards. She had a fine-boned face and solemn blue eyes that made people treat her differently – treat her _better_ – and a soft, hesitant smile that grandmothers loved to coo over.

She was no good at making friends. Although she wanted them, Lucy often said the wrong things at the wrong times without any tact whatsoever. She was awkward in a way that was always internal; in a way that didn't show itself until she opened her mouth or was asked a series of questions. Even still, Lucy had been kind and affectionate as a child, prone to tears and sensitivity. She had few companions, and those she did retain she clung to with a fervor that was unnerving.

Things took a turn for the worse when Lucy hit puberty. It had started early for her, and the first time she bled it was during a choir recital. She had a lovely voice – her only positive trait besides her face – and as such Lucy had been standing at the front of the stage, square and center.

She'd been dressed all in ivory, as was required. Her school was traditional in many ways, and the old belief of virginal white still held sway in most of the administrative circles. Lucy hadn't realized something was wrong until another girl screamed, pointing to the dark red stain that soaked through the front of her sundress. Afterwards she had simply stood there, palming the redness with eerie detachment until her sixth grade teacher had dragged her offstage, flushed with sympathetic embarrassment.

From then on she became more sullen, her verbal ticks and wildly inappropriate comments getting worse. Lucy had been friends with Tommy even back then, and the two girls had grown close. So close that Lucy hadn't wanted anyone else around them.

Tommy suffered through early puberty as well, only it wasn't in the way the other girl had wanted. They both stayed short, but Lucy grew breasts while Tommy grew a thick middle and thighs. For a time – that time _in-between_, before the teasing got worse – Lucy's best friend had tried to change it with diet and exercise. It didn't work very well. Slowly, the visual differences between them grew stark. Soon everyone begun wondering why Lucy shadowed Tommy and not the other way around. Tommy was not exempt from this confusion.

"Why do you like me?" She'd asked Lucy one day, on the verge of tears after another failed round at the treadmill. "I mean, why do you hang around me? They're right, you know. I look nothing like you."

Tommy wasn't meant for exercise, for blood or sweat or tears. She was meant for books and daydreaming and being brilliant. She was the prophet. Lucy's prophet. Lucy had blinked at her owlishly, struggling to find the words.

She wasn't good with words. She never had been, but she wanted to be, almost desperately. She wanted to tell Tommy that they were the same – that they were both awkward, just in different ways – but she hadn't been able to parse it. Instead, Lucy had placed her hand against the center of Tommy's chest, pale and slim with fingers like matchsticks, feeling the beating of Tommy's heart. It was a strong heart. A good heart.

"I like the insides." She said slowly, struggling to express herself. "I like the things inside you." Always, it had been the things beneath that Lucy adored. Pretty people were like nail polish: a plastic veneer of processed beauty to hide their internal flaws. Lucy knew this because she was one. They were rotten inside, the beautiful people, rotten like roaches and maggots and worms living in the bowels of someone's intestines.

Tommy wasn't like this, and it wasn't because she wasn't lovely to others. Lucy had seen ugly people: truly awful individuals that were rancid in every which way. Tommy's insides were warm and smelt like sunflowers, and they reminded her of happiness. Lucy didn't have the words to express this, though. When she tried to explain, Tommy had wrinkled her nose in confusion.

"You're really weird, Lucy." She said.

"But I like you." It was the only thing that mattered in Lucy's mind.

A few months later the teasing escalated. One girl – Annette – was worse than all the others.

Annette was one of the beautiful people – the prettiest girl at their east-end school – with golden hair and deep blue eyes and flawless skin, her legs long and slender with the quintessential thigh gap in the middle. She had ruled over their classmates with an iron fist. Annette hated Tommy for no other reason than Tommy was different, but Lucy – Lucy hated Annette because she could see the girl's **true** face. The festering pestilence that rotted deep inside her.

Tommy used to have long hair when they were younger; beautiful brown hair that was several shades lighter than Lucy's but just as silken. When Annette cut it off during class one day, snipping Tommy's braid at the base of her neck, Lucy hadn't been there to stop her. She'd been called away because she was sick, her migraines having gotten worse over the past several months. Eventually she'd been sent home puking. It didn't stop her from hearing about the incident, though, or seeing Tommy's tear stained face afterwards.

"My hair!" Tommy had screamed hysterically as Lucy held her and cried for them both. "Lucy, my hair!"

Lucy was bad with words, but she excelled at exacting vengeance. She wasn't smart about it, nor conniving or duplicitous. It was simply instinctual, knowing how to hurt others where they would hurt the most without getting caught in the process.

She followed Annette into the locker room one day: a Wednesday, when all the grade eight classes had tennis practice. Lucy had a pretty face – a doll face, the only good thing about her – and when she acted sweet and demure and fluttered her eyelashes she always got what she wanted. At the time it had been clutched tight in her hand.

Annette took a shower the same time each class, fastidious as she was about her hair and utterly secure in her belief that no one at the school could touch her. Slowly, so Annette couldn't hear her, Lucy had taken off her shoes and her socks, her sweater and book bag. She had walked into the next stall over, and when Annette was distracted she'd taken the girl's shampoo and mixed the contents with a mild form of acid; a concoction of cleaning fluids and over-the-counter hair remover.

The screaming hadn't started until Lucy was in the next room over, and by that time it had been too late to save Annette's beautiful long blond locks. They had fallen out in clumps as she tried to dry them. Annette was taken to the doctor and eventually released, but she wasn't so pretty after that. Her outsides matched her insides, bereft of substance.

The day after the incident, when Annette's hair was the talk of the town, Lucy had arrived at school to see Tommy smiling. Immediately she was filled with contentment. Tommy was happy, so she was happy. It was the insides that mattered, the guts and bones, the blood and the brains. The intent of others.

External beauty was just a by-product.

* * *

When Lucy woke up she was in a cell, and it was dark and dank. The stones walls were an awful mixture of gray mixed with green, covered in mold and lichen.

The cell was small, barely three by six, and so coated in moss Lucy was sure it hadn't been used in ages. From her position atop a narrow cot lying on a threadbare blanket, she could hear the roar of rushing water from behind the thick stone walls, almost like a ravine tumbling downwards. Somewhere in the room there was the echo of slow dripping water, and the air was so moist it caused her to wheeze like an asthmatic.

Her head was pounding, her tongue feeling fat inside her mouth. The left side of Lucy's face was swollen, and there was a bright square of light floating above her. Her vision was so blurry it took Lucy a moment to realize that the light came from a window: a ceiling hatch with intricately carved iron rods etched across it. At the end of her small room there was a heavy door made of something that looked like wood, and across the lichen-covered floor were strewn greening rushes. Everything was damp with water.

Lucy shivered, so weak and disoriented that she wasn't able to crawl beneath the threadbare blanket to escape the chill. She was in a bad way. A really, really bad way. Her head was spinning and the vertigo was awful, the dizziness so systemic that it was impossible for her to move her head without gagging. The pain in her leg was fierce, but it was numbed-out by the burning in her lungs; a sharp, stabbing sort of agony that Lucy found utterly unbearable. Her chest was heavy, each breath an arduous gasp. Every time she exhaled there was a wet rasping sound that made her think of a balloon slowly filling with water.

Cautiously, Lucy lifted a sluggish hand to feel the fabric of a stiff linen bandage wrapped around her head and the cool paste beneath it. Her leg was heavy and immobile, as if it were splintered. The rest of her injuries were left untouched. They had bandaged her up enough to keep her functioning, but no more than necessary. Lucy remembered the look of fury on the dark elf's face as he cracked his white bow across her temple.

"They're perfect." Tommy had said. "They're supposed to be everything human's aren't. That's what makes them so great."

Trying to breathe as shallowly as possible so as not to agitate her lungs – trying not to move at **all**, or think about dead, desperate Tommy – Lucy closed her eyes and willed herself to go back to sleep, detaching her mind from her body and letting her limbs sink into the mattress. Her mind tuned in to the sound of dripping water, falling into a sort of trance.

Eventually someone came to see her.

It was a female elf – an _elleth,_ Tommy had called them, insisting that Lucy know at least the most basic of words – slight and tall and dressed in black and silver. Lucy didn't realize she was there until she felt cool hands on her forehead, pushing aside her matted hair to check the bandages. When she did so Lucy shuddered.

The elleth had big black eyes in a pale ageless face, and her hands were soft as a baby's, the skin taut and unblemished. Lucy couldn't stop staring at her eyes. They were ancient, and in Lucy's mind she could see _beneath_ them, the endless years and endless exhaustion that came from living for far too long without respite.

The elf looked tired. She **felt** tired, when she touched Lucy's face. Ragged, and slightly worn down.

She couldn't see very well, not through the swelling, but Lucy was fairly certain the more the elleth studied her the more troubled she became. She brushed away Lucy's hair to reveal her features. After a moment she pulled her matted locks back even farther to examine her ears. The elf ran a curious finger along the rounded edges, tugging on an earlobe when she didn't react. The furrow in her brow deepened.

Her eyes were incredibly dark, a true form of black. At first Lucy thought the elleth was troubled by her physical appearance, but Black Eyes was staring at her in a very odd way, a sort of hyper-conscious _un_focus that made her gaze look even more endless. Lucy stayed still under the elf's ministrations, her mouth slightly slack and eyelids at half-mast. Her limbs were limp as the elleth adjusted her bandages and ran her hands along various parts of her body.

When she placed her hand near Lucy's left ear and snapped her fingers, Lucy didn't respond. Black Eyes' expression morphed into concern.

She fixed the splint on Lucy's leg and placed a threadbare pillow beneath her head to elevate it, but she didn't pull up the blankets to protect her from the chill, leaving quickly soon after. Lucy supposed it was better than nothing. Mostly, she supposed she was too far gone to care. She wanted to fall asleep and never wake up. She wanted to be back on the rooftop, hand in hand with Tommy, their brains splattering against the pavement and sirens wailing.

They needed to arrive in the Third Age, Tommy had said. The Third Age was the best age, and by far the safest. Lucy wasn't sure about that one, but if this place was real she hoped she could find some sort of spell or scroll that would send her back. As soon as she felt better, Lucy decided, she would ask for Gandalf. He was one of the few people from Tommy's books that she remembered with any sort of clarity. The wizard would know how to help her.

Lucy drifted for a time, not really awake but still hearing and seeing. By the time she came back to herself there were two elves standing over her, the elleth from before and a dark haired _ellon: _another word that Tommy had made her remember.

The two elves were alike in many ways. They were both pale skinned with glassy features, their hair long and dark and braided. The silver jewellery they wore was simple but exquisitely wrought. Both of them were dressed entirely in black, and the overall effect was rather morbid. The ellon had pale gray eyes very much like the archer on the mountain, but his face was narrower, his lips thinner. The Coroner - as Lucy dubbed this new elf inside her head - carried an inherently bitter air around him. It was a bitterness that made his lips pinch together and his forehead furrow into a perpetual frown. Beyond that, he just seemed weary.

They were talking to each other, the two elves. The male held her head carefully between his hands as he felt along her jawline, while the elleth conversed rapidly, pointing to various spots on Lucy's body. She looked upset – if a marble statue could look upset. Lucy stayed still under their examination, as she was too tired to talk. The elleth said something abruptly, her voice low and almost hissing in alarm. She pushed aside Lucy's unbound hair to reveal her face, pointing to it emphatically. "Hên_._" She declared.

The Coroner made a humming noise with his tongue, almost a _hmph._

"Ethir tol mîn pain cadw_._" He said, his tone neutral but firm. He kept his hands on Lucy. She stared up at him blankly, barely registering the way his slim fingers felt the glands along her throat or the spots behind her ears. He seemed to be searching for something, his manner very much like a doctor's. The ellon said something in a reproachful tone, almost an admonishment, then added "Calagor baur degant firen."

"Hên_._" Black Eyes insisted. "Firen **winë**."

"Gwanw hên." The male shot back, then frowned heavily, raising one of his hands and snapping his fingers in front of Lucy's face. Lucy barely followed the movement. When he snapped his fingers again and she still didn't respond, he reached forward with his other hand and cradled the side of her head, tilting it towards him. The Coroner spoke sharply over his shoulder without looking at his companion, his frown deep.

"Mana neitha na hen?"

Black Eyes looked even more disquieted, if that were possible, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. She was slim and tall and so very alien. Her visage was slightly terrifying, like looking at a slender switch of willow stretched and shaped into the form of a woman. Lucy was sure if she herself had been standing she wouldn't have even come up to the elleth's shoulder.

Black Eyes bit her lip, looking distressed. Over what, Lucy couldn't say.

_"_Im doú henio." The elleth said in a tone of hesitant admittance. _"_Firen doú pladamaer. Ennas rhoeg ened."

"Calagor?" The male asked. The female shrugged, looking down at Lucy.

They exchanged a few more words, each of them punctured by soft observations made with pointed fingers and furrowed brows. The two of them examined Lucy's wounds with the clinical disinterest of a pair of taxidermists dissecting a corpse. The elleth seemed slightly more sympathetic, but only barely, and even then it was because something about Lucy seemed to disquiet her.

Maybe she saw the insides too, Lucy decided. Maybe she saw something that was rotten.

When they got to her chest the Coroner carefully felt along her sides, fingering the breaks in Lucy's ribs through the dirtied material of her clothes. Lucy sucked in a sudden hiss of breath: the first time she had done so since she had woken up and they started examining her. It hurt to the touch, so much so that Lucy saw stars. Her skin beneath the creature's slim hands was soft and spongy.

When she breathed out she could hear the fluid in her lungs. They could too, it seemed.

"Sin baur na penio." Said the ellon, placing one hand against Lucy's side and another on the center of her chest to feel the way her ribs moved as she breathed. Lucy wheezed beneath the added weight, light as it was. "Û si." He continued. "Anaduilin tírad hên."

The female elf looked highly unimpressed, but for cold, clinical reasons born of efficiency, not humane ones. Her response was caustic. The Coroner shrugged in return.

"Im doú henio." He admitted blandly, taking his hands off Lucy's chest to reach into a bag by his side, pulling out a slender bottle. "Ethir ná ethir, pen uin anrand."

He held out the bottle to Black Eyes, waiting for her to take it. He gave what Lucy assumed were a series of instructions and the elleth listened obligingly, although there was a deep frown marring her face. When he finished relaying his message, the Coroner sniffed at the air, looking at Lucy in distaste. The male elf eyed her bare legs with a particular sort of concern.

"Abgovad, esgal hên am." He said, pointing to the mangled limbs with an errant finger. "Hên û no hell."

The elleth's eyes narrowed dangerously, but she took the bottle from the Coroner all the same, angrily stepping around him as he got up and left without another word.

After the Coroner left, Black Eyes uncorked the bottle and made Lucy drink the contents. It was difficult at first and Lucy choked on most, with half of the liquid dribbling out the side of her mouth and down her cheek. Even still it tasted sweet and had an immediate effect. Soon Lucy's chest didn't feel quite so bad – her breathing almost bearable – and not long after she was high and euphoric, hallucinating fields of flowers and cornucopias of stars beneath the shimmering moonlight.

Black Eyes made concerned _tching_ sounds throughout, dabbing at the liquid that stained Lucy's cheek. When Lucy tried to reach for her jewellery, thinking that the silver strands were stars, she sighed mightily. The elleth applied a salve – a thick green past that smelt like rosewater – and then helped Lucy sit up, her arm carefully going around Lucy's middle so as not to bump her ribs. Lucy moaned as the world spun, her head lolling against Black Eyes' chest.

"Am hên." The elf commanded. "Am."

The elleth gripped Lucy's closest hand with her free one, then lifted her off the cot, half-dragging and half carrying her into the adjacent hallway. Every now and then she would murmur words in elvish – words that gave Lucy the impression they were supposed to be comforting, but weren't. It was evident the elleth didn't want to say them.

Black Eyes walked her down a long hallway made of dark gray stone, most of it greening with moss and echoing with the constant plunk of dripping water. Muted through the thick walls of the dungeon there was the constant roar of a nearby ravine. The passageway was lit by small squares of open stone cut into the ceiling, and every ten feet or so there stood a guard, their faces hidden by intricately carved helms and their armor made of black leather and silver chain mail.

The air was just as heavy and moist in the hallway as it was in the cell, and soon Lucy was wheezing. Tommy had said nothing about the atmosphere being different here, too thick and oxygen-rich to breathe in properly. In hindsight however, it made sense. You couldn't fall into a place that wasn't real, but this was not **their** world, the one Lucy that remembered, and if it were real then of course things would be different.

_The blood and bones, _Lucy reminded herself. _The things inside. _It was always the things beneath – the little things – that made a difference.

Finally they reached a large wooden door at the end of the hallway, a guard standing on either side of the entrance. Black Eyes shifted Lucy in her grasp as the closest gaoler opened the door. Lucy coughed fitfully, her head lolling against Black Eyes' chest. Inside the room was long and wide, its ceiling curved in an arch and carved in a menagerie of intricate patterns. The chamber was big enough to fit at least thirty or so people comfortably, and reminded Lucy oddly of a bunker. It was mostly empty at the moment, devoid of all furniture save for a pair of chairs in the center of the room and a strangely carved table at the far end of the chamber, next to an iron brazier.

There were several elves standing around, but not as many as Lucy had seen in the hallway. Most of them were dressed in black – which seemed like an awfully depressing color for an elf to wear – although standing near the brazier was the archer that had knocked her out, and standing beside him were two of his three companions.

The Archer was talking to another elf who was broad in the shoulders but smaller overall than the others. His silver-hued hair was pulled into a severe knot that rested at the nape of his neck. The ellon was dressed all in black, like Black Eyes and the Coroner, but his features were different enough from theirs – and from the Archer's – that Lucy wondered if he was another species altogether. His countenance was so sombre he looked like he had come straight from a funeral.

In his pale hands the ellon held one of Tommy's books. Lucy couldn't tell which one it was from a distance. Black Eyes pulled Lucy forward and sat her on the closest chair, but she was so dizzy and unresponsive she couldn't stay upright without assistance. She sagged forward until the elleth let out a sigh of exasperation and righted her into a seated position, her hands firm on Lucy's shoulders.

By the brazier the Archer was twitching with rage, his eyes alight and expression murderous as he gestured animatedly in Lucy's direction, then to the book his pale companion was holding. Through the ringing in her ears and the cotton-like sensation that clouded her senses Lucy could hear words like _Sauron_ and _Morgoth, _along with an odd name that sounded like _Angband. _If she imagined hard and pretended she knew what they were actually saying, she was sure the Archer was also spitting out such flattering expletives as _spy_, _traitor_ and _whore _for good measure.

Silver Hair listened to all his complaints with a stony face, only interjecting twice. The second time he broke the Archer off abruptly, and the dark-haired elf fell silent, albeit with great reluctance. He clenched his hands at his sides so tight his arms were trembling, two bright spots of color flooding his cheeks. In the low light Lucy noticed something that she had not seen before: a clasp at his neck holding his cloak in place, made of steel and shaped like an arrowhead. Lucy vaguely noted that he and his blue-clad companions didn't interact much with the elves in black, almost as if there was an invisible divide between the two groups, unspoken but acknowledged. The silver-haired elf kept his hands on Tommy's book. After the Archer finished speaking the sombre ellon stepped towards Lucy and sat down, the legs of his chair scraping across the stone floor as he pulled his seat closer.

His face was different from the other elves: still delicate, but lovely in another way. His nose was shallower than the others, the bridge of it lower and less straight. His features were more fox-like, and his ears and the digits of his fingers were longer.

The ellon's eyes were silver too. Lucy would have called them gray, but they reflected too much light.

Silver Hair held up the book: it was Tommy's copy of _The Silmarillion_, splattered with blood and dented from the fall. The cover was dark and plain, decorated only by a scrawling band of elvish script that Lucy couldn't read wrapped around the cover. Silver Hair tapped a single slender finger against the writing as he looked her straight in the eye.

"Quenta Silmarillion." He said, reading the elvish script aloud. His voice was as sombre as his countenance. Turning his head, he tapped his finger twice more atop the embossed design, his long digit thumping dully against the paper. The ellon bit the inside of his cheek as he did so, his expression distant and one eyebrow raised as if he were pondering over the words. A moment later he turned the book back around so it was facing him. Almost languidly the elf began flipping through the contents, breaking the spine and forcing it open so the pages turned rapidly from left to right. His eyes skimmed mindlessly over the English letters.

Lucy's head lolled. It was getting harder and harder for her to maintain her grip on reality. The medication Black Eyes had given her was beginning to wear off much too fast. Silver Hair was still flipping through the book, bringing his forefinger to the tip of his tongue to wet the end so he could easily turn the pages. When Lucy's head started sagging dramatically, he looked up. His gaze was critical and far too intelligent, but oddly blank. He pointed to one of the pages written in English, tapping it benignly.

"Man thel pent?" He asked. Luck didn't have an answer for him. He kept on staring, scrutinizing her with a detached sort interest that verged on chronic boredom. Behind him the Archer was pacing. He was getting more and more agitated, his cheeks flushed pink. Silver Hair lowered the book to his lap and gently closed the cover, placing his delicate hands atop it.

"Car le buio i Fëanorians?" He asked. When Lucy didn't answer, he tilted his head as he examined her, rigid and dainty as a bird. He was not the most physically imposing elf in the room, but there was a disquieting lack of empathy about his gaze that made him twice as terrifying.

"Man lín eneth?" He drawled. The Archer stopped his pacing at this question, looking up at Lucy. His gray eyes were over-bright, his fair cheeks still flushed. The Archer's nose was a different shape that Silver Hair's: straighter, and the bridge more narrow. He had heavy eyelids – bedroom eyes, Lucy had heard the type described, the kind that painters loved to paint – and highly pronounced cheekbones. Normally Lucy would have chalked this up to family genetics, but Black Eyes and the Coroner had them as well. All three of them were bigger than the silver-haired elf sitting in front of her. Most of the guards were too.

"Car le buio i Sauron?" Asked Silver Hair. Lucy started awake at the name. She didn't know what the ellon was saying, but _Sauron_ was a familiar word. Lucy decided - after her less than delicate treatment - that whatever the elf was asking wasn't good. She swallowed heavily, feeling even dizzier. She wanted to answer, **needed** to answer, but the air was too thick and dense. She could barely concentrate on making sure one breath came after another, much less form a coherent response. She was so very, very tired, and her chest was beginning to ache.

Silver Hair stared at her, waiting for her to voice the words. When Lucy did nothing but gaze at him briefly before letting her head flop forward, he finally stood. His metal chair scraped loudly across the damp floor as it was pushed backwards with the movement.

On silent feet the pale elf stepped forward until he was standing in front of her, close enough that the hem of his short black cloak was brushing against the skin of Lucy's legs. When he reached forward, the hand that he fisted in her hair was fine boned and elegant, the fingers unnaturally long as he curled them inwards and lifted. Lucy could feel his short nails scraping softly against her scalp as he tilted her head, pulling it into position so she was looking up. Her head was limp beneath his grasp, and her eyes wouldn't focus. Lucy could barely stay conscious.

Silver Hair turned her head to the left and then the right, his bright eyes blank and calculating as he examined her. Behind him the Archer had taken a step forward, his hands clenching and unclenching repeatedly as if he was trying to restrain himself from grabbing something.

When Lucy didn't react to the hand on her head Silver Hair looked up, staring at Black Eyes behind her. The two elves were the same height despite Silver Hair being male.

"Ûn thloew." He said. It was a statement.

"Firen **winë**." Black Eyes insisted. She nearly spat out the words. Her tone strongly suggested that she was thoroughly unimpressed with his tactics. Silver Hair bit the inside of his cheek again – the left one – humming briefly as he looked back down at Lucy. He re-cocked his head, bird-like and rapid. He reminded Lucy of a sparrow.

"Sauron iuitho hîn nó." He said simply, turning Lucy's head back and forth. Behind him, the Archer seemed to have lost all patience. He unwound his clenched fists and took a jerky step forward, his words rushed.

"Hesto_–_" He began. Silver Hair cut him off. He had the most dulcet, mellow voice Lucy had ever heard.

"Calagor, dartha estë." He ordered blandly, not looking up. The flush returned to the Archer's face full force, his jaw locking so tightly Lucy was sure she could hear his teeth grinding. Stiffly, the dark-haired elf turned his head and stormed out of the room in a swirl of black and blue fabric. The other archers followed.

Once they were gone Silver Hair stepped back, letting go of Lucy. Immediately her head sagged. He wiped the hand that had been touching her on the front of his loose fitting tunic, as if the contact had been slightly repulsive. The ellon began dolling out orders, his words spoken in a drawl. The pale elf's eyes were hooded and blank as he tucked Tommy's book into a pocket on the right side of his tunic.

Briefly Silver Hair looked down at Lucy, focusing in particular on her legs; the same as the Coroner had done before him. His expression was distant as he gestured to her bare skin with an errant hand. It was a fluttering, delicate gesture made of fragile movements and ghostly fingers. He had a long palm, more narrow than wide.

"Esgal hên am. Hên û no hell." He said.

Black Eyes' voice was terse as she responded, as if she was trying to restrain herself from saying something foolish. "Im garo al hamma esgal in hên." She replied. Silver Hair gave her a blank look, and when the other elf held her ground he let out a soft sigh – barely more than a gentle expulsion of air – before reaching up and unfastening his cloak. He tossed it casually onto Lucy's legs, covering them from sight.

"Hebin ha." He commanded, turning back to the brazier. Black Eyes bowed low, her hand over her heart as she used her other to hold Lucy in place. Beside her Lucy slumped forward, her mouth slack and eyelids almost drooping closed. Her breaths were shallow, the wheezing gasps loud in the relative silence. Everything was spinning, and she needed to sleep. Quickly Black Eyes crouched down, reaching forward and using the cuff of her sleeve to wipe away a trail of spittle tinged red with blood that had dampened Lucy's lips. Silver Hair didn't look up.

The elf's cloak thrown over her shoulders, Black Eyes dragged Lucy back into the depths of the dungeon. The elleth had barely managed to steer Lucy back into her cell before she was once again unconscious.

* * *

**Author's Note**

I finished this chapter more quickly than anticipated. Unfortunately this probably won't be the norm. It doesn't take long for me to write a chapter – 2 to 3 days at the most – but I only write when I have the time (free time). A huge thank you you to those of you who reviewed. I'm glad you're enjoying it.

To the guest reviewer who asked when I'm going to update: as stated above, it will probably be sporadic. For a full explanation as to why, see my profile. To the other guest reviewer: I'm glad you find it interesting! I shall try my best not to disappoint in the future.

* * *

**Glossary**

Longer than the last one, with names/general words first and sentences second. As always, if you see errors (and there are **tons** of them), don't hesitate to correct me. Please note these are all very rough translations, and pretty much devoid of grammar. Most are just the general meanings, and sometimes I had to resort to a word or two in Quenya as there was no Sindarin equivalent. As such, feel free to ignore this.

Anaduilin – _Name _

Calagor – _Name  
_

Ellon/Elleth – _Male/Female Elf  
_

Hên – _C__hild_

Ethir tol mîn pain cadw – _Spies come in all forms _

Calagor baur degant firen – _Calagor needed to kill it  
_

Hên. Firen a winë – _A child. It/the human is a young child _

Gwanw hên – _A dying child  
_

Mana neitha na hen – _What's wrong with her _

Im doú henio. Firen doú pladamaer. Ennas rhoeg ened. – _I don't know. It/the human doesn't feel right. There's something wrong inside_

Sin baur na penio. Û si – _This needs to be fixed. Not now _

Anaduilin tírad hên – _ Anaduilin wants to see the child _

Ethir ná ethir, pen uin anrand –_ A spy is a spy, regardless of age _

Abgovad, esgal hên am. Hên û no hell – _After the meeting, cover the child up. A child shouldn't be exposed/naked  
_

Am hên. Am – _Up child. Up_

Man thel pent – _What does it say _

Car le buio i Fëanorians – _Do you serve the Fëanorians _

Mana lín eneth – _What is your name_

Car le buio i Sauron – _Do you serve Sauron _

Ûn thloew – _It's sick_

Firen winë – _It/the human is a young child _

Sauron iuitho hîn nó – _Sauron's used children before_

Hesto – _Sir/Captain (Quenya)_

Calagor, dartha estë_ –_ _Calagor, wait outside_

Esgal hên am. Hên û no hell – _Cover the child. Children shouldn't be exposed _

Im garo al hamma esgal in hên – _I have no clothes to cover the child  
_

Hebin ha – _Keep it _


	3. The Perfect Ones

Chapter III: The Perfect Ones

* * *

Every day, it was the same questions.

_Man thel pent?_

_Car le buio i Fëanorians?_

_Mana lín eneth?_

_Car le buio i Sauron?_

Always, it was Silver Hair that asked them.

Sometimes he varied the order of the questions. Silver Hair had a habit of – and seemed to enjoy – getting Lucy used to a routine, only to completely change it the minute she let her guard down, either through repetition or exhaustion.

Lucy was too ill to walk about, the first trip down the hallway having completely wiped her, so when questioned Silver Hair would come to her cell. Sometimes if the ellon was feeling particularly vindictive, he would visit two or three times a day. Each visit would last several hours. The elf would slid into her cell and sit on a stool next to her cot, silent as a cat; waiting in the darkness and watching her with bright eyes until Lucy jolted away and saw him there, nearly having a heart attack in the process.

Silver Hair was a taciturn sort of elf. Solemn, and oddly ruthless in an understated sort of way. He always sat with a lazy slouch – slumped forward just the slightest bit on his stool, knees bent and legs cocked out – but it was a false front of nonchalance, and both of them knew it. He didn't like her, and Lucy was sure the only thing holding him back from killing her quickly was a bizarre, inexplicable moral code he seemed to abide by. That didn't mean he was nice to her, of course. He was mean to her in other ways. Petty, vindictive ways, like setting her cup of water just out of reach, then sitting there with a deadened expression as he watched her try to grab it.

Always he reminded Lucy of a sparrow, diminutive in comparison to his larger brethren, but just as quick witted and attentive. Sometimes when he was acting especially predatory, Lucy imagined him as a fine-boned falcon, his head cocked and his silver eyes alert as he eyed her obsessively for any kind of movement.

Black Eyes came to see her most days, and once or twice Lucy was paid a visit from the Coroner. They had bandaged her properly this time – binding the broken rib on her chest, stitching the gash in her head and re-splinting her leg – but her injuries were slow to heal, and made even slower by a persistence illness. The atmosphere really was too much for her here, and that – combined with the chill in the dungeon – made Lucy develop incessant chills and a worrying, bronchial sort of cough. She huddled beneath her threadbare blankets, but they weren't warm enough, and the elves didn't seem to understand that.

Elves, Tommy had told her once, didn't get sick like humans. They didn't fall ill or age or die. Sometimes they killed themselves, and there was this thing called _fading_, but they most certainly didn't understand the concept of temperature, nor the weather or how it could affect the body.

"It's horrible." Tommy had told her one day when the were sifting through the contents of Lucy's attic, looking through her grandmother's possessions in search of an old six-foot tall mirror. Back then, Tommy had been sure they could reach Middle Earth through a reflective service.

"They waste away and die from grief." Tommy said. "Apparently their bodies and souls are too closely connected to survive when one of them is damaged."

"So you're saying they commit suicide. Slowly."

Tommy had sniffed, looking affronted. "No! Well, sometimes I guess, when they just can't take it anymore. There was this elf called Maedhros, in the First Age. He killed himself by jumping into a pit of fire."

"You mean they can't deal with loss." Said Lucy, who had lost very little at all, expect maybe her sanity. "I get it."

Tommy had been distraught. "It's not like that!" She insisted all throughout the day as they swept away cobwebs and choked on dust. "It's not like that at all. You don't understand."

Lucy really **didn't** know loss, except maybe the loss of affection. She knew the loss of warmth, though. Intimately, and with great consternation. It was a constant for her down here in the dungeon. There was a detached sort of negligence about they way the elves treated her that wasn't purposeful; a kind of neglect that came from lack of experience. The blanket was one such example, the lack of food and water another. Lucy was always thirsty – thirsty in a way that had nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with illness – but more than once she was left with nothing to drink, sometimes for hours at a time. Whenever that happened, Black Eyes would eventually rush in with a bowl of water and a bit of bread, looking flustered but too proud to admit that she'd forgotten.

Lucy was too sick to cultivate any sort of appetite, so the lack of food didn't bother her much, but when she first tried drinking water she'd ended up vomiting. It wasn't that the water was bad, or that she drank too quickly. Like the air, it was simply too different for Lucy to process. Black Eyes made a soothing sound of comfort when it happened and refilled her cup, but Lucy simply hurled again. By the second day she had managed to keep most of it down, but even then she could only drink the water in tiny, pitiful sips. She was dehydrated, and even the slightest bit upset her stomach. Still, there was nothing else to drink, so Lucy swallowed. The thought of dying from thirst was something that terrified her so deeply she could barely even begin to fathom it.

Silver Hair was less negligent with her than the others, but Lucy soon learned that that was because he was a different sort of elf from most of the guards in the dungeon. He seemed relatively comfortable around humans. None of them liked her, of course, but the larger elves – the dark-haired ones – seemed absolutely clueless as to what to make of her. More than once Lucy caught a guard peering into her cell with blatant curiosity, and even Black Eyes seemed confused by her appearance. Inordinately, they seemed more concerned with that than with her health. Bare skin – or at least Lucy's bare skin – was strictly taboo.

The most dramatic incident by far came when Black Eyes tried to bathe her.

Elves had heightened senses, Lucy knew. Tommy had told her this more than once, and she was quite certain it extended to their noses. Black Eyes didn't wash her right away, as Lucy was in too much pain to be moved, but by the second day in the scent that was clinging to her – a mixture of sweat and despair – seemed to be too much for them to take. That morning Silver Hair stepped into the chamber only to visibly rear back, his nostrils widening. He back-stepped into the hallway and snapped his fingers repeatedly in Lucy's direction, angrily calling out for somebody named _Limbrethil_.

Soon after, Black Eyes stormed into the cell, glaring furiously at Silver Hair as she passed him by. She slammed the door in his face.

Black Eyes – whose name might have been Limbrethil, for all Lucy knew – sat her up and rested Lucy against the damp stone of the wall, leaving the room briefly before returning with a medium sized wooden bucket filled with water. Lucy was drugged and definitely out of it, but when Black Eyes began stripping her of her clothes to give her a sponge bath she flinched. Lucy would have protested against the violation of privacy if she were feeling better, but at the moment all she was concerned with was the cold. Black Eyes had frigid hands, and the water had been even cooler.

"It's c-cold." Lucy begged weakly, speaking through her chattering teeth. She'd been shaking furiously, her shivers verging on spasms. Black Eyes had continued with her ministrations, her expression blank and devoid of emotion, save for maybe annoyance.

"Please." Lucy said, feebly curling in on herself as Black Eyes unbuttoned and removed her sweater. "It's c-cold. P-put it back."

"Shh, hên." The elleth crooned, moving on to Lucy's shirt. "Lín gerin na." They had moved aside parts of her clothing before to treat her wounds, but never all of it.

"I w-want Tommy." Lucy had ground out, because Lucy **always** wanted Tommy, only now she wanted her best friend and only confidant with a fervor that was encompassing. "Take me to Tommy."

The elleth's expression morphed into annoyance. "No tîn, lissë." She said.

"Take me to Tommy." Lucy repeated. The elf shot her a patronizing glance, full of disapproval. "Hên_._" She warned.

"Take me to Tommy!" Lucy wailed.

She must have sounded like she was on the verge of a tantrum – and she probably was – because the elf sighed and reached into the satchel tied at her waist. She flipped the leather cover open, pulling something out that was round and dark and looked in it was covered in sugar.

"Shh, hên_._" She soothed, her voice an odd combination of exasperated detachment and maternal care. "Sí, garo miseán."

Quickly – before Lucy could understand what was going on – she gripped Lucy's chin between her slim fingers, popping the sugar ball into her mouth. It was eye-searingly sweet and tasted like chocolate. Lucy **hated** chocolate. She turned her head and immediately spat it out.

"Ai, lín ná taitë faeg míw rhaug!" The elleth hissed in clear annoyance, reaching up to wipe Lucy's lips clean with the edge of her sleeve, muttering to herself all the while. The motion distinctly reminded Lucy of a mother fastidiously cleaning a baby.

"I want to see Tommy." She repeated miserably.

The elleth ignored her, and seemed perfect content to do so until she had stripped Lucy of all but her underpants. Only then did she let out a gasp – a soft one, barely noticeable – leaning forward and grabbing Lucy's arm, extending it outwards and turning it over so she could see the soft underbelly of it. There was a single long line splitting the center of it from armpit to wrist, thick and white and ridged with scar tissue. The mark was precise and surgical, and it wasn't the only scar Lucy had.

She had other lines. Deeper lines. There wasn't a horrible story behind them. No tales of despair or hospital room visits or rampant thoughts of suicide. Lucy simply had compulsive traits, a knack for destruction, and very steady hands. The only thing she could remember with any clarity about the scars was that she had wanted to see her insides.

It was the first time Lucy witnessed Black Eyes' distress – a true sort of distress, and not just an exasperated facsimile. Gently the elleth knelt before her, and then with hyper-careful movements she began to scrub Lucy's limbs clean. Lucy sat there docilely, shivering from the cold. The entire time Black Eyes watched her with a limpid sort of gaze. Each time she found a new mark she made a soft _tching _noise of distress, and soon the elleth's eyes began to water.

The biggest marks were on Lucy's thighs, three on either leg. The scars were precise and straight, like parallel white lines drawn with a standard ruler. When she saw them, Black Eyes reached up and wiped at her eyes, sniffling audibly. The elf was on the verge of what looked like sobbing, and Lucy didn't understand why. They were just marks. Old marks, from the times where Lucy's memory got fuzzy and her malaise was particularly severe. There were much more distressing things to be upset about, like broken ribs and legs and heads, and Tommy's brains splattered across the mountain.

"Pen nahta lín?" Black Eyes asked through her sniffling, holding out Lucy's arm and tapping the scar to show Lucy what she was talking about. When Lucy stared at her blankly, shivering against the chill, the elf tried again. Her voice became even more gentle, her words spoken slowly, as if somehow that would make Lucy understand them better. It didn't.

"Sauron nahta lín?" She asked. Lucy perked up at the word Sauron, sitting straighter, and the elf went ashen at her reaction, swallowing convulsively as if she were going to be ill. Lucy always recognized the word Sauron, just like she recognized that Gandalf was good and water was cold.

"Tommy was looking for Sauron." She told the elf in a rush. "That's why we came here to the mountain. Tommy was a prophet. She was going to stop him, but Tommy fell." Lucy felt her stomach twist uncomfortably. "You can see her insides on the outsides now." She said in a hush.

Black Eyes just swallowed hard and dried Lucy off, her expression one of deep-seated despair.

After the elleth had dried Lucy's hair and fixed her bandages, she pulled a white tunic over Lucy's head. It fell to the floor and was so long in the sleeves it covered her hands and was constantly slipping down over one shoulder. Black Eyes tried to make Lucy drink another medicinal concoction, but Lucy didn't trust anything they gave her anymore. The last one they'd fed her had knocked her out and made her nauseous. She struggled so fiercely that the elleth was forced to pin her down and pinch her nose, making Lucy swallow the entire thing despite her protests.

Afterwards, Lucy fell asleep. When she returned to consciousness – a groggy, barely-there sort of awareness – Black Eyes and Silver Hair were standing in the room. Her sleeve was pulled back and Black Eyes was gripping her wrist, lifting her arm to show the pale-haired ellon the scars.

Silver Hair listened to Black Eyes rant and rave for several minutes with a stony face. When she finished speaking he bit the inside of his cheek, his jaw clenching reflexively as he folded his arms across his chest and looked away to another point on the wall. A moment later, he left without a word.

The time after that in the days to follow were strange. The elves treated Lucy with more delicacy, yet continued their accidental negligence. It was as if they believed being gentler to her while keeping Lucy locked in a dungeon would make her more receptive. Silver Hair visited frequently, asking questions and bringing Tommy's books, but even though her injuries were healing, Lucy was getting sicker. Most of the times she barely managed to stay conscious long enough to make it through one of the ellon's visits.

On the sixth day, four days after the bath and a day since Lucy's fever had taken a turn for the worse, Black Eyes came into her room, crouching down beside her cot with a slightly less blank expression than usual. Lucy was lying on her back, her dark hair spilling around her to pool across the cot. Her thin form shivered beneath the threadbare covers. Lucy had been fantasizing about owning a blanket for days now. A nice down cover, soft like cotton and thick with feathers. Anything to keep her warm would have been nice.

She coughed fitfully, her chest rattling. Black Eyes made a cooing sound and pulled the thin cover up around her chin with an odd sort of gentleness, tucking it tenderly beneath Lucy's chin. In her other hand she held a child's toy. It was a doll made of cloth, beautifully constructed with copper hands and feet and head. It was dressed all in blue, and there was real hair sewn to its skull, its eyes made of dark brown stone.

"Manen línmatha?" Black Eyes asked her, speaking slowly and in such a way that it was clear she thought Lucy was touched in the head. When Lucy didn't respond, simply staring at her owlishly, Black Eyes put her free hand to Lucy's temple, pushing back her bangs to feel her temperature. With her other hand she brought the doll forward, sitting it upright for Lucy's inspection.

"Caro línsui bábóg?" She asked. When all Lucy did was blink, Black Eyes continued talking, methodically smoothing back her hair as she looked at the doll, her expression distant and lost in memory.

"Sin né mín tithin gwathel." She told Lucy, a note of fondness to her normally cool voice. "Gwinig gwathel gwanna erin Helcaraxë, ah nín Naneth erin heleg." Black Eyes looked back at Lucy, then held out the doll, offering it to her.

"Caro lín aníra ten?"

When Lucy didn't answer and kept on staring blankly, the elleth tried to smile. It was a false smile, full of pain, and instantly Lucy hated it. Black Eyes was worn down and tired of living, and she smelt like ice and iron and unshed tears. Black Eyes wasn't like Tommy, no matter how nice she tried to be.

_She can never be Tommy. __**Never**__._

Lucy sluggishly pulled the threadbare cover up over her head and turned to face the wall, refusing to look at the elleth. Her staunch show of stoicism was destroyed by another round of painful coughing. She heard the elf audibly smack her lips together in frustration, before sighing in a heartfelt manner. There was the rustle of cloth as the she stood.

Black Eye's fingers slid over the rim of the blanket as she tucked it under Lucy's side, before gently placing the doll by her head.

* * *

The first time Lucy met an elf lord was just over a week after she'd landed in the mountains, when she was still immobile because of the breaks in her leg and her bronchial cough had gotten worse.

Black Eyes woke her up early that morning, making shushing noises as Lucy tried to bat away her hands, curling beneath the too-thin blanket for warmth. She wanted to sleep. It was the only time she didn't feel cold. Lucy always felt the cold these days, and when she wasn't daydreaming about being dead with Tommy she was fantasizing about fireplaces and feather blankets and beds that went on forever.

The elleth _tched_ her tongue at Lucy's stubbornness and put a slender hand on her shoulder, rolling her over before sliding her arm beneath Lucy's back. Whispering encouragements, she began to lift her up. Lucy groaned, her head lolling, her long hair dragging behind her onto the pillow. She had another migraine that was making the world spin, and it was causing her skull to feel like it was being split apart.

"Am hên." Black Eyes commanded. "Wé baur hûr lín. Ennas ná mo sí tíra lín."

Lucy complied in the way that she normally did: by being utterly unresponsive and making no move whatsoever to help Black Eyes with anything. The elleth _tched_ at Lucy's stubbornness, but set about washing her face with a soft cloth regardless. She scrubbed the sleep out of the corners of her eyes, pulling Lucy's overlarge shift up over her shoulder to hide the skin.

When the shift fell down again, as it was often wont, she sighed loudly and rearranged Lucy's hair over it, brushing out the worst of the tangles but letting the rest of the dark brown locks fall haphazardly down her front. Lucy stayed quiet throughout, swaying on spot and squinting hard through swollen eyelids at the elleth as she tried to focus.

"Lín bain, hên." The elleth said, her voice taking on a musing tone and eyes intent as she smoothed down Lucy's hair.

"Are you taking me to see Tommy?" Lucy asked hazily. She hadn't see the body since the fall, but she wanted to desperately.

When Black Eyes didn't respond, Lucy thought Silver Hair was coming to speak to her again, but the elleth slipped her long arm around Lucy's back and lifted her up. Lucy hissed in pain. It was the first time she'd walked in days, and her legs were weak from exercise and lack of food. The splint was weighing her down, and her ribs weren't much better. It was easier to breathe than it had been before, the break healing faster than it should have, but not by much. The elleth made an encouraging sound, letting Lucy grip her free hand in a painfully tight manner as she steered her forward and out the door.

In the hallway there was the clatter of chain-mail and the flicker of torches as guards moved about. There were twice as many of them occupying the hallways. Black Eyes walked Lucy down the corridor, past the silver-clad gaolers and the flickering torch light and once more into the room that reminded Lucy of a bunker.

Inside the elleth guided Lucy over to the singular chair, sitting her down and readjusting the shift on her shoulder when it fell aside with the movement. By the brazier at the end of the room stood Silver Hair, flipping through one of Tommy's books. There were several other elves standing near him that Lucy hadn't seen before. All were dressed in black, and one of them was pale and slight like his sombre companion, his eyes bright blue in color and his hair so light it was ashen.

Black Eyes went over to the brazier, exchanging some quiet words with Silver Hair who nodded once, before she grabbed a glass of water. The elleth handed it to Lucy, who drank greedily. The only thing that was worse than her labored breathing and the constant chill was her unassailable thirst. The minute Lucy held the cup in her shaking hands, Black Eyes swiftly turned and left.

This wouldn't have bothered Lucy much – Black Eyes often left her alone for great stretches of time, and always when Silver Hair was questioning her – but not long after the door swung open again on creaking hinges and another elf entered. He was taller than any elf Lucy had seen so far, dressed entirely in black velvet and softened leather.

The first thing the ellon did was stride across the room and swipe the cup from Lucy's hands, sitting down in the other chair just out of reach. Lucy let out a cry. She was so thirsty it was enough to bring her to tears. The elf lord slouched in his chair, gripping her cup in a casual manner.

He was ghostly pale, and while all elves were fair his pallor seemed to come from a lifetime of hiding from the sun. The ellon had the biggest black eyes Lucy had seen, framed by long, spider-like lashes. He was slender compared to the other dark-haired elves, but his height was impressive. The hands that gripped Lucy's cup were lovely and pale and so very still, like dead things crafted from marble. He was undeniably handsome.

Instantly, Lucy didn't trust him.

The elf lord stared at her for a while, leaning back in his chair. His gaze was far too intense, his dark hair glistening beneath the low light with every twitch of movement. Everything about him was black and white like ink spilled on paper. The only color to his countenance that Lucy could see was the faint tinge of pink to his lips. He looked like a lord and carried himself like a lord – full of pretension – and suddenly, Lucy missed Tommy and her uncomplicated ways with wild abandon.

She hated the elves and she hated this dungeon. She hated Black Eyes and Silver Hair and the Archer for bringing her here. Lucy wanted to see Tommy's body; to grieve over it in the only way she knew how, before hurtling herself from some nearby cliff face to splatter her own brains and finish what Tommy had started.

The elf lord abruptly leaned forward, holding the stolen cup out to her, gentle and without malice.

"Sogant?" He asked in his lilting, lyrical tongue. He had a deep voice, and very soft, but he sounded surprisingly young. His eyes were old though. Old in the way that had nothing to do with age and everything to do with experience, full of secrets and the kind of dysfunction that ran so deep it was genetic. It was kind of dysfunction that Lucy could relate to. She could see his insides, bitter like cranberries.

This one was like her, she knew instinctively. Madness knew madness.

The elf lord kept his hand extended, holding up the stolen cup up for her inspection. His expression was almost innocent. Lucy was thirsty, but she didn't take it. She had learned through Silver Hair that elves were tricky, prone to sudden fits of pettiness. The ellon waited for her to receive his offering, his long arm with its long fingers and flawless skin held perfectly still. There were silver rings on all his fingers. When all Lucy did was sit there and stare at him wide-eyed in apprehension, he sighed and grabbed the side of his chair, scooting it forward noisily. He pulled his stool close until their knees were touching, his black ones to her white. The action made him seem almost human for a moment, as it really was quite clumsy, but then that moment faded.

The elf held out the cup to her again, his eyes dead. Dead like Tommy on the mountain spire, and dead like Lucy jumping over the edge.

"Sogant?" He asked again.

This close, Lucy could see that fine detailing of his clothing: the exquisite interweaving of cloth and silver. She was hyper-aware of the way their shins brushed together. Her dirty white shift was falling down her shoulder again, and the elf lord was eying her strangely. Self-consciously Lucy reached up, tugging the tunic into place over her bare shoulder, her free hand clenching nervously in her lap. She wished he would stop staring at her. The elf lord was gazing at her bare skin with an expression that bordered on hunger. His large black eyes followed the line of her hand to her neck, but he said nothing more.

When she had finished readjusting her shift, her arm aching with the movement, there was another awkward moment of silence between them: awkward on Lucy's part, because she was tired and cold and hungry and her head hurt something awful. She was feeling dizzy again, dizzy enough that she thought she would collapse. Her mouth was parched, her throat raw from coughing. She sniffled in the damp air, rubbing at her nose.

Lucy didn't even realize she was listing forward until she felt the ellon's hand on her shoulder, cold as marble and just as pale, his other holding out the cup. He practically shoved it under her nose.

"Sogant." He commanded softly. This time, Lucy obeyed.

The cup was heavy in her hands, her exhaustion and lack of nourishment making her tremors visible. She tried to bring the cup to her lips but her hands were shaking so badly she couldn't do it without spilling the water everywhere. The elf lord leaned forward, using his other hand to cover her fingers with his, helping her steady the glass.

His skin was smooth and dry, and this close he looked like a statute made of flesh; just a bit too real to be made of stone, but far too perfect to be something living. The hungry eyes were on her again, large and lovely and so very dull.

The elf lord kept his hand on hers until she finished her water, and when she lowered her arm he took the cup from her, leaning sideways to place it on the ground by his chair with a soft _clack_. As he did so his hair fell to the side in a curtain of black, revealing a single delicately pointed ear. When he righted himself, he was looking at Lucy again, although not at her eyes.

He reached forward to grasp her face, gently feeling the swelling along her jaw line, turning her head to either side as he inspected her. Lucy whimpered. She didn't want him touching her. There was rot there; a rot lurking just beneath the surface that was going to infect her too, and no one else seemed to see it.

"Man andrann ná iell?" The elf lord asked Silver Hair. The pale elf stepped forward, clasping his slim hands together and his head held high as he reported what seemed to be a series of facts.

"Wé caro ú ista, Hír Nín ." He said. He shot a brief glance at Lucy, then a knowing one at the elf lord with his hands on her face. "Hen **ná** hên, Hír Nín ."

The elf lord hummed and didn't look up, cupping Lucy's cheek with a cool hand and using the other to sweep her long brown hair behind her ear. He tucked the locks aside, studying the rounded edge with clinical interest.

"Firen." He said. There was a note of surprise to his voice. Silver Hair nodded.

"Man nostalë o firen?" The elf lord asked. Silver Hair bit the inside of his cheek – the left one.

"Wé caro ú ista, Hír Nín ." He replied with hesitance.

The elf lord looked Lucy in the eyes, offering a chilly sort of smile that wasn't meant to comfort her. He held her face immobile between his hands, his long fingers tracking a path across her cheekbones as he smoothed the pads of his thumbs over her skin.

"Sauron aníra ti dail." He said with a drawl. The answer Silver Hair gave him was waspish, the most visible sign of annoyance that Lucy had heard from him yet.

"Sauron **ui** aníra ti dail, Hír Nín ."

There was a knock at the door, and Silver Hair looked up before gesturing to one of the guards near the entrance. The tall gaoler leaned forward in a clatter of chain mail, grasping the handle as the wooden door swung wide of creaking hinges. Another elf stood just outside the chamber.

There was nothing special about this new elf. He was tall and dark haired and gray-eyed like all the others. Silver Hair frowned at the intrusion, barking out a question that the stranger replied to with a demure tone and a polite bow, his slim hand placed palm down over his chest. The elf lord ignored them, carding away Lucy's hair to examine her face. Lucy felt sick to her stomach.

"Hír Maeglin." Said the ellon at the door. "Ennas ná mo sí tíra lín o Nost Duilin." The elf lord finally blinked and looked up before standing. Lucy started violently at the word _Maeglin_, half-forgotten memories rushing forward to fill in the gaps.

And suddenly Lucy knew who the elf lord was. She **knew** him.

"I hate him." Tommy had hissed one night as they huddled beneath the covers in Lucy's attic, rocking herself back and forth to calm her hysteria. She had just finished reading another chapter of _The Silmarillion. A_lthough Lucy didn't know all the details, she understood the general gist of Tommy's despair was brought on by a character called Maeglin.

"I hate him." Tommy had declared hysterically, her despair so strong and out-of-proportion that Lucy had actually been alarmed. "I hate him, I hate him, I hate him. I wish he were **dead**."

Lucy had tried to comfort Tommy, but it'd made no difference. She was too unhinged herself, and she hadn't understood.

"What do you mean you hate him?" She'd asked, trying to sound gentle. She had reached out with a hesitant hand to put it on Tommy's shoulder. "He's just a character in your books. Besides, I thought you liked elves."

Tommy hadn't cared.

"He's evil. I hate him. What he did to Gondolin was awful. I hate him. I hate him!"

Lucy couldn't remember exactly what the elf lord had done to make Tommy loathe him, beyond vague impressions of shifty behavior and an unhealthy obsession towards his cousin Idril. She knew Tommy hated him, though, and for Lucy – who was already unhinged and upset enough as it was – this was an excellent reason to despise him. Suddenly she was filled with a blinding, uncontrollable desire to make Maeglin hurt as much as she did. The hungry eyes and hidden rot made sense.

Without thinking Lucy reached up, tugging on the hem of his tunic. The elf lord turned to look at her, his hand still on her head. When he saw her staring up at him he smiled slightly, smoothing down her hair. The gesture was patronizing, and Lucy could tell by the way that he gazed at her that he thought her next to nothing. If he had ever met Tommy, he would have thought her even less.

Lucy tugged on his tunic a second time, giving Maeglin the biggest doe eyes she could manage as she tried to convince him without words to bend down to her level. The elf lord smiled softly at her and followed her wordless command, humoring her like he would humor a child. He sunk down onto one knee, gently grasping Lucy's free hand in his.

When he was at the right height, Lucy grabbed the front of his tunic, pulling him forward without delay. His eyes widened in surprise at her boldness, but just as soon as she'd started tugging him forward Lucy placed her lips against his ear to whisper the words she so dearly wished to say.

He did **not** like it. The elf lord immediately choked up, going stiff beneath her and making a strangled, uncomfortable sound deep in his throat. His hands trembled slightly as he tried to gently push her away. Lucy didn't know why he acted as such: maybe elves were hypersensitive. Maybe they didn't like physical contact. There was a nagging sensation at the base of her skull, a worrisome, intangible reminder that she was forgetting something vitally important. Lucy didn't care.

She wielded her words with the bluntness of a sledgehammer, spoken without thought and maximized to hurt. Maeglin wouldn't understand what she was saying, but Lucy knew he would get the gist of it. Tommy had told her he was smart.

"I heard you fuck your cousin Idril."

The elf lord pushed Lucy away so fast the chair fell out from underneath her and she hit the floor. The motion started her coughing again – great, hacking coughs that made her spasm and curl in on herself in pain – but Lucy didn't care. It had been worth it.

The pretty elf lord with the dead skin and even deader eyes was looking at her like she was hellspawn incarnate, a pink flush staining his cheeks as he rubbed furiously at his ear where she had touched him. Over by the brazier, Silver Hair had stepped forward, his arms raised in mid-gesture and his eyes widened in what could have passed as surprise.

"Ci mae, Hír Nín _–_" He began, but the elf lord cut him off, his shouts only a decibel or two lower than a scream.

"Mab hen e od tíranya!" He yelled, rubbing fastidiously at his cheek, his hysteria evident. He barked out another quick command, and immediately Silver Hair was springing into action, hoisting Lucy up off the ground and dragging her back to her room as the elf lord paced across the room like an animal.

It wasn't until she was locked in her cell again that Lucy finally remembered that vitally important thing she'd been missing. It was imperative, Tommy had said, that they arrived in the Third Age. "The ideal time for us to land is a week before Gandalf arrives at Bag End, when he visits Bilbo." were her best friend's exact words. "I'd like to arrive later, but by that time it's too late to stop anything. Too many people die."

Only that night in the Lucy's attic, Tommy had later revealed through her tears that Maeglin had died in the First Age. Killed, during the sack of a city called Gondolin.

"Oh." Lucy breathed out in slow-dawning horror, sluggishly drawing her hands up to either side of her head and fisting them in her hair. It was hard to breathe. She was choking on history. "Oh no. No."

After the incident with Maeglin, Lucy didn't leave her cell for a month. She didn't see the sunlight for even longer.

* * *

**Author's Note**

So here's where things start diverging from the usual trope narrative. For those of you who've read any of Tolkien's extended works, you'll know what I'm talking about. Hopefully it doesn't get too convoluted. I'll keep this story in the Lord of the Rings Category for now, but there's a good chance I'll be moving it eventually, most likely to _The Silmarillion._ If you don't check that category often, I'd recommend putting this story on alert.

Thank you to those who reviewed/favourited/followed! It's actually helped as an incentive to keep me writing consistently.

* * *

**Glossary**

As before, general names and words first, sentences second. The standard bad-Sindarin-grammar and general-meanings warning apply.

Idril – _Name_

Limbrethil – _Name_

Maeglin – _Name_

Man thel pent – _What does it say_

Car le buio i Fëanorians – _Do you serve the Fëanorians  
_

Mana lín eneth – _What is your name_

Car le buio i Sauron – _Do you serve Sauron_

Shh, hên – _Shh, child_

Lín gerin na – _You have to_

No tîn, lissë – _Be quiet, sweetling/sweetness (Quenya)_

Sí, garo miseán – _Here, have a candy_

Ai, lín ná taitë faeg míw rhaug – _Oh, you are such a rude little creature_

Pen nahta lín – _Someone hurt you_

Sauron nahta lín – _Did Sauron hurt you_

Manen línmatha – _How are you feeling_

Caro línsui bábóg – _Do you like dolls_

Sin né mín tithin gwathel – _This was my little sister's_

Gwinig gwathel gwanna erin Helcaraxë, ah nín naneth erin heleg – _My baby_ _sister died on the Helcaraxë_, _with my mother on the ice_

Caro lín aníra ten – _Do you desire/want it_

Am hên – _Up child_

Wé baur hûr lín. Ennas ná mo sí tíra lín – _We must ready you. There's someone here to see you_

Línbain, hên – _You are pretty, child_

Sogant – _Drink_

Man andrann ná iell – _What age is the girl_

Wé caro ú ista, Hír Nín – _We do not know, My Lord_

Hen ná hên, Hír Nín – _She is a child, My Lord_

Firen – _Human_

Man nostalë o firen – _What kind of human_

Sauron aníra ti dail – _Sauron likes them pretty_

Sauron ui aníra ti dail, Hír Nín – _Sauron always likes pretty things, My Lord_

Hír Maeglin – _Lord Maeglin_

Ennas ná mo sí tíra lín o Nost Duilin – _There's someone here to see you from House Duilin_

Ci mae, Hír Nín – _Are you alright My Lord_

Mab hen e od tíranya – _Take her out of my sight_


	4. A Stranger Cometh

Chapter IV: A Stranger Cometh

* * *

Lucy liked hobbit holes.

She liked the way they were underground, hidden but not. How you could see their outsides on their insides and everything was nice and neat and tidy, with their interior decorations placed just _so_. It was because she admired the simplicity of hobbits, and by extension their homes. They were uncomplicated and unconcerned with physical veneers, and Lucy was certain if she were to meet a hobbit one day, they would remind her of Tommy; smelling of happiness, good earth and sunshine.

When they'd been younger, Tommy had read _The Hobbit_ to Lucy aloud. She'd zoned out for most of it, because Lucy had a short attention span for the things she didn't like, and long-winded descriptions concerning dragons definitely fell under that category. Even still, she had listened with rapt attention to the parts concerning hobbits themselves. Tommy had told her tales of Bilbo and Bag End, of bright green fields thick with daises that stretched out over rolling foothills in all directions, dotted with tiny farms and quaint, pastoral-type towns.

Lucy didn't look like a hobbit, and she couldn't pass for one unless she walked with a hunch, but she liked the idea of them, of being **one** of them: the uncomplicated simplicity that came with having no greater concern than wondering what you would eat for your next meal.

But Lucy also liked tall towers.

Massive, spiraling towers that rocketed upwards, piercing the sky like javelins, standing watch over blackened plains and manned by fiery, disembodied eyes. Lucy liked the look of their exterior varnish burnt away, revealing the bones of a building: the sight of gargantuan volcanoes spewing forth clouds of pumice to darken the air for miles. Lucy liked places like Barad-dûr for the same reason that she liked hobbit holes: they were both uncomplicated, their insides of their outsides, their owners utterly unconcerned with pretense.

Tommy had told her more than once that she was crazy for associating dark lord fortresses with hobbit holes, but everyone already knew that Lucy was short a few screws, so this didn't bother either of the girls that much. Lucy was just being Lucy, and to be Lucy meant to be eerie and awkward. Tommy also had an intrinsic bias all her own, and one that they both acknowledged.

Rivendell was Tommy's favorite place, and after that Thranduil's Court. If she wasn't able to choose between either of those locations, she would always settle for Lothlórien. The reason for this was simple, really. Tommy may have trusted humans more, but it was the elves she loved the most. There were cities in the First Age that she admired too, but it was a love of a different sort. The First Age, Tommy had told Lucy, was nothing but one long, unmitigated tragedy where elves died in the hundreds of thousands, cities were razed, and whole hosts of humans were completely wiped out. The entire elven region of Beleriand – just northwest of where Tommy's books took place – had been drowned, sunken under the sea like Atlantis.

"That's why I don't like the cities in the First Age as much." Tommy had said sadly. "They're beautiful, but everything dies."

Lucy hadn't seen the difference. To her, all elven cities – and by extension, their art – were a façade, regardless of their eventual fate.

"You know it's a fake, right?" She had said one day, slightly churlish and definitely pouting. Tommy had been distracted for most of the afternoon, and Lucy had been feeling alone and very much ignored. She didn't **like** being ignored. "Their beauty isn't real. There's rot on the insides."

Normally Tommy would have gotten mad over such a proclamation, because she was as fiercely protective over the elves as Lucy was of Tommy. Only that day Tommy had smiled, her eyes distant and soft. She'd been in love even then, and Lucy knew.

"He's not like that." Tommy had argued without malice. She hadn't named names, but Lucy had known whom she was talking about. "He's wonderful. You'll see what I mean when we get there."

And Lucy had felt rage.

Blind, encompassing rage that made her want to scream in fury and rip Tommy's precious books from her short, stubby little hands. Tommy was in love with a sun god with hair like gold, but he wasn't even real in the first place. It was hopeless. There was no way Lucy could compete for the other girl's affection against something like that.

So Lucy went back to her thoughts of hobbit holes and black stone towers, to delusions of rot and veneers that were lacking. She comforted herself with the knowledge that Tommy's world wasn't real, and later that evening, she had promised herself if she ever did meet him, she would throw Tommy's sun god off a tower. The tallest tower she could find.

Maybe she would even burn his corpse.

The dungeon felt real, though. The way Silver Hair had gripped her arm as he had tossed her back into her cell felt real too. The history she was choking on felt **especially** tangible, so much so that Lucy found herself clawing at her throat as she fought against the sensation of drowning.

It was a delayed reaction to her current situation; the jump-starting of dead emotions that had previously been void and were now being brought to life. The sensation was akin to damaged nerves suddenly realizing that her top layer of skin had been slowly peeled away with a knife. The shock of it all was excruciating.

The Third Age, Tommy had said. The Third Age was important, but this was the First.

Several minutes later, when the full enormity of where she was and what _time _it was actually sunk in – the heady acknowledgement that all of this was real – Lucy started screaming. She screamed until her throat was raw, tearing at her hair and throwing herself against the door repeatedly until Black Eyes and several of the guards came barging in.

In between the screams and the sobs and the desperate pleas to go back home, Black Eyes whispered desperate reassurances, none of which Lucy understood.

"P-please!" Lucy sobbed on the bed, writhing beneath the guards' hands, kicking frantically. "Please, let me see Tommy! Let me see Tommy, I have to go back –"

"Im aiféa." Black Eyes said in a mantra through a despairing grimace, her hands shaking as she searched for something in her satchel, a tiny bottle. "Im aiféa, Im aiféa, Im aiféa!" She begged. Like before, the elleth pinched Lucy's nose to force another sleeping draught down her throat. It took affect immediately.

After that, there was nothing.

* * *

With the exception of her initial breakdown, Lucy remained disturbingly calm in the days and weeks to follow. She spent most of her time dozing, trying to sleep away the persistent cold, and when she wasn't sleeping she was lying on her side staring blankly at the wall, humming quietly to herself. Lucy didn't like to sing – words always seemed unnecessary, even the musical ones – but she was good at it, and the sound of her own voice calmed her. Truthfully, it was the fact that the words were spoken in a language she understood that mattered the most.

There was a weird kind of dissonance in her head now, whenever she heard the elves speaking; a strange sort of double echo that tickled at the back of her brain. Lucy could almost guess what the elves were saying through the tone of their voice, but this half-knowing was worse than not knowing at all. It made her strain her ears, searching for recognizable sounds, and as a result her migraines returned full force before worsening even further.

Lucy didn't see Maeglin again, but this in itself was not surprising. He didn't like her and she didn't like him, and collectively they meant nothing to each other beyond a passing threat and vague annoyance. He seemed like the type to kill his enemies, however – even the unimportant ones – and when Lucy didn't wake up to feel a dagger being drawn across her throat, she became confused. Between her typical bouts of catatonia and her rising sense of despair, Lucy surmised that the elves didn't kill her because they wanted to question her, but no matter which way she tried to wrap her head around this, she didn't see how their plan would work.

Lucy didn't know their language and they didn't know hers. And even if she had arrived in the Third Age, as Tommy intended, there was a huge cultural divide between her and her captors that Lucy could easily pick up on. She wouldn't have called their attitudes _medieval_, per say, but it was definitely along those lines. She knew little about elves and their behavior beyond what Tommy had told her, but the ones she was seeing now were nothing like the ones Tommy had described in her books.

They were bigger and stronger. More intense, and angry. Some were downright trigger-happy, prone to snapping on a hairsbreadth. Even from the confines of her cell, sick as she was, Lucy could tell that everyone was on edge. Something was wrong.

Silver Hair visited with his ever-punctual frequency, and when he questioned her his tone was just as dulcet and mellow as before. Lucy began to register little ticks in his movements: nervous tells and twitches that he fell prey to whenever he got too comfortable. The ellon had a habit of biting the inside of his left cheek whenever he was upset, and when he was annoyed – and happened to be sitting down – he would drag his right heel back across the ground ever so slightly, leaning forwards so his elbows were resting on his knees, tilting his head up. The sombre elf was smaller than Maeglin had been and definitely more delicate looking, but Lucy got the impression that he was infinitely older. The only elf that seemed to be around the same age as him was Black Eyes. Every day, twice a day when he came to her cell, Silver Hair would sit on his stool in the corner of the room nearest to her head, while Lucy would huddle on the cot and cough fitfully, wracked with painful shudders.

Lucy never greeted him and Silver Hair never greeted her, and for this Lucy was thankful when it came to the ellon's predictability; his sense of commitment to an already established narrative. Every time he visited, he would ask the same questions, holding up each of Tommy's battered books while he tapped his slim fingers against the covers.

"Man thel pent?"

"Car le buio i Fëanorians?"

"Mana lín eneth?"

"Car le buio i Sauron?"

Eventually it became clear that questioning her from across the room wasn't doing any good. Lucy was growing more and more lethargic as the days dragged on, and often she was barely able to stay conscious long enough to see Silver Hair leave at the end of each session. As a result, the ellon decided upon another tactic.

Sometime in the second week – or maybe it was even the third – the pale elf came into her cell and sat himself especially close to Lucy's bed, close enough so that his black clad knees were touching the edge of the cot. He reached to the satchel at his side, pulling out one of Tommy's books and firmly placing it in Lucy's hands. It was _The Hobbit_, and instantly Lucy felt a swell of regret as she looked at the cover.

When Lucy did nothing, her grasp so limp she nearly dropped it, Silver Hair forcefully maneuvered her fingers beneath his to make them go through the motion of opening the book to the first page. For someone who was so old – and he **was** old, old as dirt – Silver Hair had remarkably soft hands. They were only slightly callused along the fingertips.

"Tengwane." He said firmly, keeping one of his hands over hers to make sure she held the book. The index finger of his other hand tapped softly against the well-worn first page. "Tengwane."

Lucy's head was lolling against the covers and she was staring at him blankly, but she could vaguely guess what the elf wanted.

"Tengwane." Silver Hair insisted. Lucy read the first page.

It wasn't an unfamiliar part, as Tommy had read it to her many times before, but neither was it terribly important. Lucy knew Silver Hair had simply picked the paragraph because it was at the start. Her voice was flat an monotonous as she read, broken only by fits of coughing made wet and hoarse by the chill.

She got only another paragraph into the first page before Silver Hair became frustrated, shaking his head and biting the left side of his cheek as he shushed her audibly. He reached forward and flipped the book to another page – a random one – tapping his finger repeatedly against it.

"Tengwane." He commanded again. Lucy did.

They repeated this process several times over, each time ending with Silver Hair clenching his teeth and shaking his head as he told her _no_. By the end of it, the ellon was slouching forward in his chair, his eyes closed as he pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing at it as if he had a headache. If he had been the type to mutter, Lucy was sure he would have done so under his breath.

After Lucy's reading naturally puttered out, the elf took the book from her and handed her _The Silmarillion_, once again folding the cover back and holding his left hand over hers to keep it steady. He pointed to a random page with his right.

"Tengwane." He said, and Lucy read.

It made no sense to her, this part in the book: not the first time she read it through, nor the second or the third. The chapter was about the "Three Kindreds of the Eldar" and their golden years in Valinor – whatever that happened to mean – followed by the escape of a Valar named Melkor and a long, boring paragraph about his absolute loathing for the elves of Middle Earth. Even still, Lucy didn't get far – barely more than a couple lines in – before Silver Hair had a noticeable reaction to it, stiffening all over and clenching his jaw as he compulsively bit at the inside of his cheek. He became increasingly agitated the more she talked. When she got the part about "Noldor" hoarding knowledge and an elf called Fëanor swearing vengeance against the escaped Valar, now dubbed "Morgoth," Silver Hair sat up completely, his back going stiff.

The elf yanked the book out of her limp hands, turning it around to face him as his eyes scanned frantically over the English letters. Lucy could tell from the expression on his face that he didn't understand.

Silver Hair stared at the page for some time while Lucy watched him quietly, and when the ellon finally seemed to come to the conclusion that he couldn't make head or tail of the letters, he cursed colorfully under his breath. Standing swiftly, he left the cell in a swirl of black, taking the books with him as he slammed the door behind him.

After that, the pale elf did not return for some time.

The guards at Lucy's door were doubled, as if their presence alone would solve all problems and prevent her from trying to escape. The notion was laughable, obviously. Lucy was still injured, the breaks in her leg having set not quite right, and she was getting sicker, the constant chill and thick air making the fluid build-up in her lungs even worse. That, combined with her decreased appetite and her inability to stomach what food they gave her – some sort of dry, tasteless crackers – was slowly turning her wraith-like.

Lucy had always been slender. Not tiny, but definitely petite, with her size and delicate bone structure giving her a misleading air of innocence that made certain types of people – powerful people – prone to underestimating her. But Lucy's skinny had always been a healthy sort of skinny, the kind that made it known that her lack of weight was natural. Only there wasn't much meat to her to begin with, and her inability to stomach even the most basic of foods in this awful place was taking its toll on her. It made Lucy feel and look downright insubstantial.

Breathing was hard, and everywhere her bones ached. She was constantly lethargic. Often, Lucy would wake up from dozing most of the day to find Black Eyes standing by her cot, petting her head and offering her a plate of those dry, awful crackers with a horribly sympathetic look on her face.

"Medi, hên." She would beg incessantly, shoving the crackers forward like a peace offering. "Lá medi. Im aiféa."

Lucy would rarely eat them, and when she hadn't touched any of the dry, tasteless wafers for three days in a row, the elf resorted to spoon-feeding her liquids. First it was soup, and when that upset her stomach too, the elleth switched to something that looked like and had the consistency of oatmeal. Lucy was able to eat the oatmeal without vomiting, but by that time she was too weak to sit up. Much of it would simply spill across her chin along the way.

In what appeared to be a desperate last resort, Black Eyes tried feeding her something that looked distinctly like biscuits, small enough to fit into Lucy's hand and soft enough that she could chew on them without difficulty. Lucy was able to stomach the biscuits well enough, which made Black Eyes inordinately pleased. The elleth finally brought her a second blanket – weeks overdue, but it was the thought that mattered – and after she tucked Lucy in, she left a plate of biscuits by her head, next to the much-neglected copper doll.

So Lucy slept, and sometimes she ate, and when she was awake she would hum beneath her breath until she no longer had the energy to do so, after which she would stare at the wall. Every two days Black Eyes would bathe her – the elves were fastidious about cleanliness, Lucy learned – and whenever her nightgown became too soiled from sleeping, the elleth would exchange it for another shift that was just as shapeless and over-sized as the last. The only illumination Lucy received in her cell came from the stone hole in the ceiling, where the daylight tracked from left to right as the sun rose and fell in steady intervals. Lucy would have tried to keep track of the days by scratching little marks onto the walls, but she had nothing to make the marks with, and even if she did she was too weak to do so.

Through lack of energy and things to do, Lucy soon realized that the hole in her ceiling cell led to a corridor of sorts, and that the window itself was an observation port, through which some of the guards would crouch down and peer through to watch her. A breeze always blew through the opening, along with the clatter of weapons and the soft murmur of elvish voices, and it was through this that Lucy discovered that the corridor above was connected to an open courtyard, which was what brought in the chill.

Lucy hated the cold, and was always cold, but above all else, it was the boredom that got to her the most: the repetitive nature of being locked in a cell barely bigger than yourself for weeks on end, with nowhere to go and with nothing else to do. It ate at her brain in the most awful of ways, in ways she would have never imagined had she still the freedom to move. Lucy and boredom were old, intimate acquaintances, as boredom was the less-depressing cousin of malaise, but this type of boredom was so ingrained that she forgot to speak or sleep, or even that she had legs to walk with had she been able.

Lucy supposed that she should have been thankful. She wasn't being tortured, and she wasn't dying just yet. Unfortunately, she couldn't even muster the energy for that. So the days went on and the weather got warmer, the dampness ever increasing. Lucy lay still and didn't talk, and as the weeks dragged by she marinated in a concoction of despair and dull hysteria, mixed with boredom and the suffocating weight of history.

When she closed her eyes, all Lucy could see Tommy's brains splattering against the stone steppes like so much red paint, her best friend's dull brown eyes staring upwards. It haunted her memories, chasing her into the darkness where she slept.

The boredom was still less preferable.

* * *

Nearly a month had gone by before they brought the woman to her cell. By that time, Lucy was so ill she was sleeping for days in a row, utterly listless and pale as death, her tiny form shrunken and unresponsive on the cot.

Black Eyes continued to be worried over her deteriorating state and her inability to fix it. More than once she had brought the Coroner along to check on Lucy's health so he could give the increasingly nervous elleth his prognosis. As such, Lucy was used to having frequent visitors, none of whom she acknowledged and none whom stayed for any length of time.

When she heard the squeaking groan of her door being opened – yet again – Lucy didn't bother to turn her head to see whom it was that entered.

Soft footsteps padded across the ground, louder than that of the elves, who made little noise except for the whisper of their clothes. The footsteps mingled with the heavy rustling of thick skirts being shifted out of the way as they were dragged across the floor. It didn't sound like Black Eyes – who wore skirts of a lighter sort – but Lucy decided in her illness-induced stupor that the elleth had simply changed her dress for something warmer.

Lying as she was on the cot, with her face facing outwards and her left hand draped limply over the side, Lucy was able to see the swirl of dark purple fabric when it came into view, the skirt made out of a refined blend of wool. It was nothing like the shimmering velvet and polished leather the elves seemed to prefer. Still Lucy didn't look up, closing her eyes after the initial inspection and wishing to fall asleep. If she pretended the person wasn't there, then maybe they would leave. Silver Hair always left, these days.

"Are you the child?" someone asked in soft, heavily accented English. Lucy's eyes snapped open.

The sound of her own language was so unfamiliar to her that at first Lucy didn't recognize it, and it had little to do with the way the woman rolled her _r's _or slurred some of her words. It was because she had gotten use to the silence, and when she didn't hear the silence she heard the elves, their lyrical tongue turning to gibberish against her ears. The fact that the woman was speaking a language she understood abruptly sunk in, and Lucy gave a slight jolt, tilting her face away from the pillow to look apprehensively towards the voice's owner. She was too confused and too fearful to let herself believe what she had heard.

There was an unfamiliar woman standing by her cot. She was an ordinary looking individual, with olive toned skin and dark brown hair that verged on black. It was thick and braided, partially hidden beneath an ornately woven navy veil. The stranger was dressed in modest purple, with no skin showing save for her hands and face. Over her shoulders was thrown a large fox fur cape, held tight across her front by a Celtic-looking clasp. There was a flyaway look to the loose strands of her hair, and a flush to her cheeks that made Lucy think that she'd been traveling. She wasn't young, but neither was she old. If Lucy had to place her age, she would have said the woman was anywhere between thirty and thirty-five.

The stranger wasn't an elf – that much was certain from the woman's height and the bluntness of her features – but beside her stood Black Eyes, wringing her hands nervously. Standing in the doorway and partially hidden in shadow was Silver Hair, a slight frown upon his face.

"Ai, you are so thin." The woman breathed in her heavy accent, her voice full on concern. She reached down, almost without thought, and placed her smooth hand against Lucy's long hair, brushing it aside. Lucy coughed at the slight contact, her hacking harsh enough that it caused her to curl inwards to try and contain the spasms.

"They told me you were ill." The woman confessed gravely. "But I didn't think it was so much. Faster, they said to come, faster, faster! But it is hard to go fast these days. Too many orcs." She gave Lucy a tremulous smile, almost apologetic, and when she spoke again her expression made sense.

"You must forgive them." She said. "These Noldor elves, they are not like their cousins. They are newcomers here, yes? Not so used to humans. They often forget we are not so strong."

Lucy – who by now was horribly confused and feeling increasingly fuzzy-headed from hearing English spoken aloud – merely raised her head off the pillow and stared at the woman with swollen eyes thick with sleep, her expression deep with suspicion.

If she had been thinking more clearly, Lucy would have thought to ask certain things. Important things. Things like how the woman knew English and where she came from and what exactly was her name. She would have thought to ask if she was allowed to go home or see Tommy's body, which by now was either picked clean by vultures or disposed of by the elves, as corpses were wont. But Lucy was cold, always cold, and the chill was in her bones, sapping away her strength. She had always been awkward.

So instead she said what was easiest. The only thing her mind could process in its muddled state.

"Do you have an extra blanket?" Lucy slurred, before breaking into a fit of coughs. Her voice was hoarse from being silent for so long. The woman made a sound of despair and gave her a look of abject pity. She immediately slid off her fox fur cloak and draped it over Lucy, who merely crumpled under its weight.

Lucy didn't try to thank her, nor did she speak again. She simply rolled over and closed her eyes, basking in warmth, and immediately went back to sleep.

* * *

The woman's name was Morwen, Lucy learned after she woke up.

She came from the east, past the mountain range of Ered Luin, along the westernmost edge of a large stretch of land known as Rhovanion in between the river Greylin and the northern tip of the Eryn Galen forest.

None of these places meant anything to Lucy, whose only impression of Morwen's long-winded explanation was that the woman came from very, very far away. So far away that Lucy wondered why she had even bothered to come at all.

Because she was _asked_, the woman told her with a nervous glance towards the door. The elves had asked her, and elves being elves she could not refuse. Lucy read between the lines well enough.

The distance was only part of the reason why it had taken so long for Morwen to arrive. They had ridden day and night for nearly a month on the fastest horses the elves could find, but part of the journey had involved something Morwen would only ominously refer to as "eagles." Their haste had not been enough, as there were orcs everywhere and even more dangerous sorts of creatures lurking in the dark. The lands to the north were burning, and everyone was fleeing south.

Morwen explained all this to Lucy with the apologetic gaze of one who knows their audience is barely listening, yet is required to speak regardless. Black Eyes ignored them both, anxiously fussing over Lucy as she pulled her upright to sit on the bed so she could swaddle her with blankets. Morwen spoke the elvish tongue, called _Sindarin_, and after a long conversation with Black Eyes where she told the elleth that Lucy was sick from the constant chill, the elf had been truly mortified. Now the elleth seemed desperate to overcompensate, constantly checking Lucy's temperature with a hand to her forehead, piling on more and more blankets until Lucy couldn't breathe from their collective weight.

Morwen talked over the elf's haphazard ministrations, relatively unconcerned. Lucy watched her with saucer-wide eyes, not really processing the fact that she was once again having a conversation in English.

"This is why they wanted me to come. To translate." Morwen said in her heavily accented tone, some of her words so thick that Lucy could barely understand. "This tongue, they do not know it. It is a small tongue, yes? Not very well spoken. I am surprised you are fluent. You do not look of the east."

Morwen assured Lucy that "English" was her mother tongue, but they did not call it that where she came from. They called it Hûthem, after the ancient scholar who created it, and it was a regional dialect that was quickly being overtaken by the dominant language of Sindarin, which was the language of the local elves. Hûthem may have sounded like English, but the differences were apparent in the ways that Morwen sometimes used different meanings for different words, and the off-beat way in which she arranged her sentences. Their written language was different as well. Silver Hair – whose name was Anaduilin – had show Morwen the books, and she could not read them. She could speak it though, Morwen assured her.

"This tongue, they did not think to know it." Morwen continued, sniffing in condescension. "I am sure they are regretting it now." The only reason the woman was here was because Anaduilin's people were from the east, and the elf had recognized some of the words that Lucy had spoken. Morwen always spoke softly, her voice deceptively feminine, but she was exceptionally animated. It made her seem years younger than she really was.

"But this Anaduilin – you know him, the Sinda with the silver hair? His kind were here long before the Noldor came. We do not see the Sindar often, my people, but they know of us, yes. And I know their language. I am a Council Member among my people. A wise woman, like my grandmother and her grandmother before her."

Silver Hair was different from the other elves Lucy had seen, as she had much suspected. When Lucy asked Morwen about this half-heartedly – because she was struggling to keep up with the conversation even at the best of times – the woman explained that Sindar were Middle Earth elves, and the Noldor were something else.

"They are from the sea." She said, waving her hand dismissively. Morwen had never seen the sea. Morwen didn't **need** to see the sea, as Morwen herself explained it. At times she seemed just as lost as Lucy, explaining away what she could through second and third-hand knowledge alone.

"The big ones, they left, the Sindar said. And then they came back, and there was much killing and sadness and death and now there is war. There has been war for a very long time, you know. For my mother's generation and her mother's generation and the generation before her, and before that and that." Morwen sighed. "The Sindar, they do not like all these Noldor elves that come from beyond, because they killed their Sindar cousins too. The Noldor like their jewels. They like their metal. They make their swords and they make their oaths, and they poked Morgoth like an evergreen hunter pokes a sleeping bear, and many hundreds of years have passed and still there is war. Most of the north is lost."

She waved to Black Eyes, pointing to the elleth while she gestured to her own nose and mouth, touching her features one by one as she spoke to Lucy.

"The Noldor, you can tell who they are by how they look, see? This one – Limbrethil, she named herself to me – she is Noldo. They are bigger than Sindar. Much bigger and always pale, always dark hair. They have straight noses like this –" Morwen gestured to her own nose, making it appear straight. "Because there is different bone structure beneath. Different from my people. Different from your people. Different from Sindar, although not so much."

At this proclamation, Morwen made a vague gesture towards the door, where Silver Hair had disappeared to. He had made himself scarce once Morwen started talking. Lucy wondered if it was **because** Morwen was talking. She talked an awful lot.

"The Sindar, they are small. Bigger than humans, but still smaller than sea elves. Like comparing falcons and eagles, yes? Sindar have fine bones, hollow bones. Makes them light on their feet, quieter than the Noldor. Faster too. But always pale they are, like Anaduilin. And with not so straight noses."

Morwen frowned slightly, but in a thoughtful way. "You will not see many of them here." She confessed. "Or not as many as they are in the east. This is a high Noldor city, ruled by one of their princes. The second one, I think."

At this Lucy perked up slightly, coughing fitfully as she started at Morwen from beneath heavy eyelids.

"Where am I?" She asked hoarsely, already short of breath. "Tommy… Tommy said we needed to arrive in the Third Age. She said there would be a white city, and there would be seven gates. We needed to use its library. Tommy said so."

Morwen frowned at this in confusion, crossing her arms over her chest. She turned to Black Eyes – now dubbed Limbrethil – who was currently making cooing noises like one would make to a baby as she attempted to feed Lucy a biscuit.

Morwen said a few words, and the two of them conversed rapidly for a moment, with Limbrethil shaking her head _no _and nodding _yes _several times over. Morwen finally turned back to Lucy.

"I am sorry." She said. "I did not know if I was allowed to tell you this, but Limbrethil says there is to be a trial and you are to be taken above, so it does not matter much anymore. They think you are a spy, you see. But you are in Gondolin, yes? It is a Noldorian city. The **good** kind of Noldor, Limbrethil insists I tell you. She is worried you will think they are _Fëanorians_, and try to escape. I am not so sure of this term. I think they are another type of elf."

Lucy only clued in to one part of the entire explanation, and immediately it filled her with a dull sort of dread.

"They think I'm a spy?" She croaked out. "They're going to put me on trial?"

If she was feeling more charitable, Lucy might have laughed at the absurdity of it all. If she had the energy to feel despair, she would have cried and wailed. Morwen hummed, seeming to mull over her words before she spoke.

"Well, to be more accurate, they think you are a baby-witch. A creation of Sauron's, no? Limbrethil has told me a different word from baby-witch, but I do not know how to translate it, so this is the closest I can say to what they think."

"A _baby-witch_?" Lucy warbled. Morwen nodded.

"A not-so-grown witch. You speak in strange tongues and carry dangerous knowledge about very important things in languages they cannot read. You whispered a spell to their lord and it made him upset. He has been sick, and this is very odd. You are very odd. But Sauron takes children all the time, you know. He takes them and he shapes them into servants of darkness, so Limbrethil says. But elves like children, yes? Elves love children, even the evil ones. They always want children of their own, more and more children, but they cannot have so many. Too many of their children have died in the war. It is hurting them, I think. They want to know if you are an orphan."

"Why?" Lucy asked with trepidation, still reeling and feeling discombobulated after hearing the rapid-fire question stuck on to the end of Morwen's explanation. The request was odd, and when Lucy asked, the older woman gave her a smile that looked and felt false. Lucy knew it was false. "**Why**?" Lucy demanded, her tone rising to a pitiful wail.

At that moment Limbrethil took the opportunity to snugly tuck Lucy's blankets beneath her chin, smiling hopefully at her as she grabbed the neglected doll and brought it up for Lucy's perusal. She maneuvered its tiny copper hands around like a puppet's as if to make the doll seem more alive.

"Bábóg?" Limbrethil asked in a bright voice, holding the doll out for Lucy as if offering to let her take it. Lucy glared at her and coughed fitfully, shivering underneath her blankets.

"I'm not a baby." She said, then turned to Morwen, trying to plead with the strange woman. "Tell her I'm not a baby!"

Morwen looked uncomfortable – like she was trying to find a way to word what she wanted to say in the most diplomatic manner possible. "The elves think you are a child." She settled on instead.

"But I'm not a child! I'm sixteen!"

As if on cue, Limbrethil seemed to think that the best cure to Lucy's rising distress was a fresh round of biscuits, and she delicately grabbed Lucy's chin to pop her mouth open and stick a cracker in-between her teeth. Lucy glared at the elf, and Morwen gave her an apologetic half-smile.

"Limbrethil has told me that all you eat is baby food without being sick, and these biscuits you eat are of such. You are short and tiny and not very strong, and your skin is still soft and new. To them, this is a baby."

Immediately Lucy spat the biscuit out.

Limbrethil clicked her tongue in admonishment, quickly reaching up to clean Lucy's face with the edge of her sleeve like a fastidious mother hen. Lucy tried to bat her hands away, but she was too weak, and her flailing only seemed to make the black-eyed elf even more smothering in her attention. Morwen stood, gathering her heavy skirts around herself as she made to move towards them. She lifted one of her hands to gesture towards Lucy, attempting to calm her down.

"Sweetness, it is good if they think you are young. Better that they think you are young. Please. You must calm yourself."

"But I'm not a child." Lucy insisted, feeling her frustration mounting. It was tempered only by her utter lack of energy. "I'm sixteen and my name is Lucy, and I jumped off a building because Tommy told me to. She said we needed to come to Middle Earth, but I didn't want to come here. I didn't. I didn't! I want to go back!"

Morwen frowned heavily and took another step closer, putting a gentle hand to Limbrethil's slender shoulder and speaking quietly. The elf responded well enough, but soon looked disquieted, and after another few moments of brief conversation she quickly stood and left.

Morwen sat down on Lucy's cot beside her, her expression open but concerned. Despite her age she was rather pleasant to look at, and although she was not as beautiful as the elves there was something striking about her features that drew the eye. The navy veil that draped across her thick bundle of hair fell in folds around her face, contrasting sharply with her slightly browned skin.

The woman took Lucy's right hand between hers, thin and pale with fingers like matchsticks, rubbing it between her own hands for warmth. Lucy huddled beneath her blankets defensively, glaring outwards. When Morwen began talking, it was slower than before, and almost contemplative.

"I am sorry Sweetness. Lucy, I meant to say – may I call you Lucy? I know you are sick, and when one is sick and things happen, they do not always understand. And these sea elves, they may not know how to take care of you, but they mean well. You grasp my meaning? Good. You may be Sauron's creature, but children are children. Children are precious, especially when so many die in the war."

"I'm not Sauron's creature." Lucy snapped. "I'm **Tommy's**."

Morwen sighed and patted her hand.

"In truth Sweetness, you are young, but I know you are not a child. And among my own people sixteen is rightfully a woman, when children can start having children of their own. But these elves, they do not know that. They do not understand and I cannot explain it to them without them accusing me of being false. The Sindar, they understand better, because they have been around humans before. But these sea elves, these Noldor? They come to this land with their own ideas and their own way of living, and they will not listen to anyone else. Sixteen is nothing to the age of an elf, and I have met enough to know that they do not understand how we age much quicker than they. And perhaps that is for the best. Perhaps it will keep you safe."

It was the way in which she said her final words that made Lucy's dull sense of terror rise; the way the woman was smiling falsely, how she seemed to hedge around the questions with almost flowery words. Lucy could tell that Morwen's gentle expression was not benign. Inside, the woman was shaded gray, smelling of cotton and winter chill. She did not strike Lucy as bad per say, but wary and extremely cautious. She was hiding many things.

"What do you mean?" Lucy asked. Morwen gripped her hand and leaned in close, her words soft but full of warning.

"Sweetness," She said. "The only reason you're still alive is because they think you a child. If you were full grown, they would have killed you weeks ago."

* * *

**Author's Note**

A huge thank you to those of you who reviewed. I'm thrilled you guys are enjoying it. To guest reviewer Sammi: thank you for your wonderful comment. Tension and drama are hugely important to me, so I'd glad this story achieves at least a bit of that. To guest reviewer NL: I'm not really sure what you'd like me to say in regards to your question. I'm not even sure if that's pertinent to this scenario.

Not much to say about this chapter, only that it's a good example of what I mean when I say "sporadic posting." Life and more pressing obligations got in the way.

A note on Morwen's name: Elves don't reuse names (canonically) but humans do, and as such there are a gazillion Morwens in Tolkien's universe. It can get a bit confusing, but for the sake of clarity I should probably state that the Morwen of this story is an OC: the name has simply been used because it's a recognizably human one, and it fits canonically within Tolkien's universe.

* * *

**Glossary**

A note on translations: there isn't that much this time, but I've basically come to the point where I'm unable to find certain words in either Sindarin or Quenya. Since Sindarin was originally based on Welsh, I've had to do some creative extrapolation from that. I've marked with asterisks which words fall under that category.

Im aiféa – _I'm *sorry_

Tengwane – _Read_ _(Quenya)_

Medi, hên – _Eat, child_

Lá medi. Im aiféa – _Please eat. I'm *sorry_

Bábóg – *_Doll_


	5. King's Way

Chapter V: King's Way

* * *

Lucy was fascinated by the way that Morwen picked at her nails.

The woman had several nervous habits. Although she was not a nervous person herself, Lucy had spent the last month and a bit doing nothing but sleeping and observing others, and by now she considered herself somewhat of an expert on the subject.

The elves were difficult to study, since they tended to be more guarded around her from the start, but Morwen was friendly and very talkative, and above all overtly nervous. She seemed unable to control her habits to a certain degree, her anxiety a direct result of the elves. The woman stayed with Lucy for great lengths of time, talking about nothing in particular as if to calm herself, but it took Lucy less than a day – through various indirect hints – to discover that Morwen had been brought to the city under extreme duress. It had definitely not been her choice.

Her people were friendly – if distant – with the native Sindar, and of the Noldor they had no contact with. Everything they learned about the elves from the sea was through second and third-hand sources alone. Unfortunately for them, Noldor were Noldor, which is to say their pride was a factor. They were not accustomed to asking for things, and humans were expendable when resources were scarce, especially during times of war. Morwen's people had been the only available translators that they'd known of.

Terse words had been spoken. An ultimatum may or may not have been issued. But these Noldor, they meant well, Morwen insisted again and again. They were just under a tremendous amount of strain, their people stretched too thin. Being at war for too long did that to a person, even the immortal type. **Especially** the immortal type. It made them testy, prone to breakdowns and leaps in logic. Yes, of course, she would say. That had to be it.

When talking, Morwen would turn her left hand over, palm facing upwards, and with the dedication of a miner she would pick miniscule specks of dirt from underneath her well-kept nails with a slightly shaking right hand. The woman would work from little finger to thumb, then turn her palm over, delicately rotating her wrist and spreading her fingers outwards for examination. She would then begin the process all over again, this time with her palm facing down and her fingers spread out. Sometimes she would massage the underside of it, rubbing at the tendons with the thumb of her other hand.

Limbrethil did not leave them alone after their first meeting, returning frequently to take care of Lucy with renewed dedication. The elf seemed determined to shoulder the role of a surrogate mother. Lucy wanted nothing to do with her, as the idea of being treated like a toddler was highly unpleasant, but most times she simply sat there and let the elleth go about her hand-wringing business. It meant Limbrethil would tuck her into bed and let her sleep that much sooner, finally leaving her in peace and quiet.

Morwen was not in Gondolin for long before they decided to commence the trial. Less than two days, by Lucy's reckoning. The morning of the meeting, both Morwen and Limbrethil came to her cell ahead of time to ready her. The process was rather frantic, as Lucy – who had just been woken from dozing beneath her newly acquired covers – was still sleepy, and in a particularly foul mood.

"In truth." Morwen began, picking at her nails. "There almost wasn't a trial. You would have stayed down here for much, much longer. Maybe too much longer, until you died, although I am not so sure of that one. They would not tell me with certainty what it was that they planned to do, but there was a risk of it, yes."

Morwen was dressed in what Lucy assumed was an elvish style, her thick woolen dress replaced for a thinner one of sombre gray. It was low in the shoulders but high in the bust line, making it drag straight across the ridge of her collarbones. The darted sleeves were shot through with criss-crossing lines of delicate piping, and her dark hair was tied back, contained beneath a net of silver webbing.

"Why would that happen?" Lucy asked sluggishly, more for the sake of talking than actual curiosity. She shivered beneath Limbrethil's ministrations. She was feeling ill that morning. Lucy always felt ill in the morning, but she was feeling especially sick today because she was being forced to get up. The subsequent vertigo from moving around was making her downright nauseous.

Above her the sunlight was bright, shining into the cell at a sharp angle with a peculiar intensity, but as with all spring and summer mornings the air was cool and crisp. There were little beads of moisture dotting the greening stone walls. Ever present in the background was the roar of the hidden ravine.

"There are eleven houses here, yes?" Morwen said, massaging the underside of her palm. "Eleven lords and their peoples, and they follow the King. He is the Noldo prince I was telling you about. And this prince, he may be their King and he may rule, but these eleven houses must come to a consensus on important issues before anything can be done. This place you are in now, it belongs to the House of the Mole, ruled by the prince's nephew named Maeglin. You met him, yes? And Limbrethil and Anaduilin, they are of the House of the Mole as well, but it was not the House of the Mole that found you. Anaduilin says it was the House of the Swallow, or _Nothrim Duilin_. That is where the problem arises."

Lucy shivered and blinked sleep out of her swollen eyes, sitting dejected on the edge of her bed. Her legs were swinging over the side, feet dangling above the ground. Limbrethil had bathed her that morning before Morwen arrived, dressing Lucy is another clean, shapeless white shift. The elleth was currently trying to brush the tangles out of Lucy's long brown hair. When Lucy shivered, Limbrethil made a soft noise of concern, petting her head affectionately before retrieving another baby biscuit and handing it to her. Lucy nibbled on it mechanically. She wasn't hungry, but she felt a little less dizzy when she ate, so she did.

"Will Maeglin be there?" She mumbled through her mouthful of biscuit. Limbrethil perked up at the name, but continued brushing her hair. Morwen picked at her nails and raised an eyebrow.

"He will. He is the Lord of the House of the Mole, so he must be there, although Limbrethil tells me he has not been feeling well this past month. You have made him very troubled, this spell you whispered to him."

Lucy was correcting the other woman before she could even think through her words.

"I didn't say a spell." She muttered, savagely biting off a corner of her baby biscuit as Limbrethil _tched_ her tongue and forced Lucy to hold her head still. "I asked him if he fucked his cousin Idril. I don't think he understood most of it."

Morwen was horrified.

"You should not have said that!" She whispered in a hiss, leaning forward and massaging frantically at the underside of her palm. "What you said, it is a great offense! Elves do not marry their first cousins, and his cousin is the daughter to the King! The Noldo prince!"

And still, Lucy kept going. She couldn't stop.

"I didn't say marry. I said _fuck_. There's a difference."

Morwen moaned and rubbed at her forehead in despair.

"Sweetness, no. No, that is bad. You must not say things like that. You must think before you talk, understand? These Noldor, they are already stressed. Already, they are at war for a long, long time. If you upset them enough they will not care that you are a child. They will not."

Lucy didn't care either. She was already thinking about other things, her attention diverted.

"The archer that found me – the one with the big white bow who hit me over the head. Is he from the Swallow Nest?"

"The _House_ of the Swallow, Sweetness. And yes."

"House of the Swallow." Lucy repeated, rolling the words over her tongue before saying _Nothrim Duilin_ aloud. Limbrethil looked up at the name and smiled gently, patting Lucy's cheek in encouragement. Lucy alternated between squinting at the elleth and nibbling on her biscuit.

"Nothrim Duilin." She said again. She could almost taste the strangeness of the words. Limbrethil pointed to her own chest, speaking slowly so Lucy could follow the sounds.

"Limbrethil." She announced. Lucy squinted at her. "Limbrethil." The elleth repeated. "Lucy mellon nîn."

"What's mellon nîn mean?" Lucy asked.

"_My friend_." Morwen deadpanned.

"Nothrim Maeglin." Limbrethil said next, patting her black-clad chest in affirmation with a slim, pale hand. Lucy parroted her words, albeit with difficultly. The elleth grinned with delight and spoke a few more rapid-fire sentences, petting Lucy's hair and planting an affectionate kiss against her temple.

Morwen was still rubbing at her forehead in consternation. The woman was frowning heavily as if fighting off an incoming headache. Lucy sat there docilely, nibbling on her biscuit.

"The archer." Lucy said, almost as an afterthought. "I spoke to him, and he hit me. He split open my head."

Morwen looked like she was dreading the answer.

"And what did you say to the archer, to make him do so?"

Lucy finished off her biscuit. "_Where is Sauron._"

Limbrethil paled. Morwen rubbed at her forehead anew, closing her eyes.

"Ai, this trial will be a disaster. A disaster." She lamented. Lucy was unconcerned. She should have been, but the shock of being where she was had once again begun to wear off. Malaise was powerful, if not persistent, and at the moment she was feeling too ill to care. Besides, she wasn't supposed to have survived the jump. She was supposed to have been dead on the rocks, her blood splattered like so much red paint just like Tommy. Having a trial was an upgrade in a sense.

Limbrethil finished working her way through a particularly nasty knot in Lucy's hair. The elleth was dressed nicer today that she normally was: not fancy, per say, but the cloth was of better quality. Her long gown was black as ink, the voluminous outer sleeves slit open almost all the way to the shoulders to trail down to the floor. Her black hair was loose, the fronts of it held away from her narrow face by a pair of braids.

"You said there almost wasn't a trial?" Lucy queried as an afterthought.

"Yes." Morwen said in agreement, if reluctantly, as she went back to picking at her nails. Right to left, front to back, massaging her palms over and over again.

"The Lord Maeglin was furious, and wished to let you rot. But it was the House of the Swallow – the archer, yes? – that found you first. The House of the Mole controls the prisons and the mines, so Limbrethil tells me, but House Swallow demanded access to you after you were brought here, and Maeglin refused. One house cannot attack another house to take what they want, so House Swallow told the House of the Hammer – the Hammer of Wrath – and they took offense, as they do not like the House of the Mole. The Hammer of Wrath shared this news with the Lord of the Fountain, and the Lord of the Fountain told the Lord of the Golden Flower. This Lord of the Golden Flower, he is not a subtle elf, yes? Or so Limbrethil tells me. Either way, he was upset that a child was being kept in the dungeons, and he went and told the King. The House of the Swallow put in a formal request for access, and because the other houses already knew, the King agreed and Maeglin could do nothing. Now, you are to be taken above."

The explanation was lost on Lucy. All she got from it was that Gondolin had a million houses that didn't get along; like a series of neighbors in a white-picket neighborhood arguing over whose side of the broken fence the damage had fallen on.

"I'm cold." She complained, her teeth chattering audibly. Morwen sighed at Lucy's lack of interest, going back to rubbing at the underside of her palm as she spoke quietly to Limbrethil. The elleth gave Lucy a gentle smile and picked up one of her previously discarded blankets, wrapping it around Lucy's shoulder's before feeding her another biscuit – the last on the plate. Lucy still wasn't hungry, but she let her. The elleth was agreeable when Lucy let her conduct her mothering as she pleased, and right now she was too tired to fight it.

Limbrethil bent down, picking up Lucy's small feet one after the other. She covered them with something that looked suspiciously like baby booties, soft as down and embroidered with patterns of little golden birds. Lucy glared, but the elleth ignored her, humming softly as she laced up Lucy's feet.

Just before the knock sounded at the door, Morwen got up and crouched beside Lucy, taking both her hands in her own and looking at her with a severe expression. Limbrethil stood, once again reaching for the brush.

"Before we leave, there are things I must ask you. Things I must tell you, as they are very important." Morwen said. "These things, I hope they are not too wrong, because they are things I learned from being around Sindar, not Noldor, but we shall see."

This close, Morwen looked like nothing but one writhing mass of gray, her insides churning like a slow-building thundercloud, filled with the kind of tension that came just before a storm. A year before all of this had happened, Lucy's perpetually nervous mother had taken her to see a psychiatrist. The doctor had diagnosed Lucy's oddness as an external synaesthesia; a sort of hypersensitivity combined with systemic delusions that made her assign colors and values to others' behavior like they were color swatches on a paint rack.

Lucy reached out, placing her hand against Morwen's chest to feel the beating of the woman's heart. She liked listening to others' hearts. Lucy didn't know if the elves had hearts like humans did, but Morwen was human, and her heart was pounding. It was a strong heart just like Tommy's, but strong in a different way.

Morwen eyed her strangely, rearing back slightly at the touch.

"You're nervous." Lucy said, her voice taking on a faraway quality. Morwen opened her mouth to speak, but Lucy kept going. "Your insides, they're gray. I can see them."

Morwen's grip on her increased.

"I am not sure what sort of spell you just whispered." The woman said, her words low and full of warning. "But I would advise against doing such a thing in front of the Noldor. They think you are a witch. Sauron's baby-witch. If they think you cannot be saved, they will be forced to kill you. Sometimes Sauron corrupts too much."

"I didn't come here to serve Sauron." Lucy countered, her voice serene. She was floating in the malaise again. That distinct, hazy sensation where her senses numbed and she cared about very little at all. "I came here to serve Tommy, but she's dead now. She was the one that wanted to stop the dark lord, not me."

Lucy leaned back, allowing Limbrethil to reach across them and braid parts of Lucy's long hair away from her face. Morwen looked even more disquieted.

"Will more follow you, where you came from?" Morwen asked.

Lucy blinked lazily, looking down at her. She thought about the seven-story building. About the traffic weaving in and out below them and the way the wind had pushed her pleated skirt against her legs. Tommy's hand had been firm in hers, small and short and slightly clammy. Tommy wasn't here anymore, but her blood had been the most startling shade of red.

"No." Said Lucy sluggishly. "I think they'll die first. I was supposed to die, too."

"That is good. Good." Said Morwen in a rush. "Not that you are not dead, I mean, but that others will not follow. They will like that. It will work in your favor. I must know – are you an orphan?"

"Why do you keep asking if I'm an orphan?"

Morwen's grip on her remaining hand tightened.

"The elves." She said simply. "They wish to know."

"Why are you even here?" Lucy asked instead. Morwen gave a little jolt, and a small look of hurt passed over her features. Lucy's words had not been spoken kindly.

"You know why I am here." The woman said uncertainly, her expression guarded. "I was asked."

"You mean you were forced. I don't like it when people lie to me. You shouldn't lie. It makes your insides rotten."

"Sweetness, you need to listen to me –"

Lucy re-gripped Morwen's hand in her own, her gaze intense but so very dead, like a pretty ball-jointed doll's. Lucy was forever being compared to a doll, and she used it to her advantage.

"It's alright." She said with a nod. "I forgive you."

Morwen looked downright alarmed.

At that moment there was a knock at the door, and all three of them turned towards the noise. When Limbrethil opened the door, Silver Hair – now dubbed Anaduilin – was standing there. Behind him there were six black-clad guards, their faces covered entirely by intricate helms of silver.

"Hana lhû." Anaduilin said in his even, mellow voice. He looked particularly severe today. Limbrethil nodded, and Morwen rubbed at her brow with her hand. She clenched Lucy's hand in her other, her expression full of concern.

"You are not ready." She was muttering under her breath. "You are not. It is not good."

Anaduilin strode forward, and instead of Limbrethil helping her to stand the ellon was the one to pick her up. It was a fact that Lucy did not like and was not expecting, as it deviated from the norm. She reared backwards when Anaduilin tried to touch her. It made the fine-boned elf pause, his hands resting briefly in midair. He said something in a sharp tone that booked no argument, never once taking his eyes off Lucy. Morwen translated for him.

"Anaduilin, he says you can either let him help you up, or he will find a guard that will carry you there instead. It is your choice."

Lucy pouted, but sat still and let the elf approach. After only a moment's more hesitation, he reached for her.

Morwen retreated to the hallway to stand between two of the guards, giving Anaduilin more room to move about, but Limbrethil remained where she was. She briefly stepped aside to let the warden complete his task, but her expression was one of worry. The entire time she looked on disapprovingly, frowning at the way the ellon handled Lucy and how he helped her up.

"No bân." She warned, and Anaduilin paused yet again. He shot Limbrethil a side-eyed glance, saying nothing as he gripped one of Lucy's hands in his, putting his other hand to her elbow. The ellon forced her to stand despite her protests, and Lucy gasped aloud at the sensation.

She hadn't stood – much less walked – in so long that the muscles in her limbs were like jelly. The breaks in her leg were mostly healed by now, a combination of inactivity and the elves' attempts at healing. Even still, the bones were sore and tender, and Lucy walked with a noticeable limp. Anaduilin drew his arm further around her to hoist her higher. When he did so, Lucy hissed in pain as his fingers came into contact with her still-healing rib. In vain, she wished for a crutch.

This close, the silver-haired warden seemed alarmingly tall. He was still smaller than most of the elves Lucy had seen, but that meant little in regards to her Lucy herself, who didn't even reach his shoulder. The hand that gripped hers was long and slender, the flesh of his palm firm but smooth.

Limbrethil made a waspish comment when Lucy whimpered in pain at the contact, her mouth turning downwards into a scowl. Anaduilin responded easily enough, but his words were authoritative. Morwen looked between the two elves, clearly wary, and when Limbrethil suddenly turned around and disappeared into the hallway, neither Anaduilin nor the woman said anything. The silver-haired ellon didn't look at Lucy as he skilfully maneuvered her towards the door.

Once in the hallway, Lucy leaned sideways out of the ellon's grasp to speak to Morwen, asking the woman what the two elves' conversation had been about. Morwen began massaging the underside of her palm, shooting a nervous glance towards the silver-haired ellon.

"Limbrethil expressed her concerns about taking you to the trial today, yes? She has offered to help you to the council chamber, but Anaduilin refused."

Anaduilin chose that moment to gently pull Lucy closer, guiding her step by step along the hallway. Two of the silver-helmed guards spread out in front of them, their black cloaks swaying with their movement as they walked swiftly down the corridor. The other four fell behind the party, melting into the gloom. Lucy kept talking as Morwen walked briskly beside them.

"Why did he refuse?"

Morwen let go of her palm to start rubbing at her forehead, her other hand reaching down to lift up the hem of her skirt as she walked.

"It is politics, I believe. Limbrethil, she is only a minor warden. A sort of nurse, yes? She is not allowed to be there at the trial, as she does not have the rank to do so. She says this should not be the case. She says you are still weak, and as a child you still need care. But Anaduilin, he is Captain of the Prison Guard, yes? He answers only to Lord Maeglin, and after that, the King. It is his job to bring you there. He must not refuse."

Anaduilin said nothing to either of them while Morwen was giving this explanation, and in truth he did not speak the entire way there. The ellon remained characteristically sombre, and with the exception of occasionally glancing towards various elves in the hallway that bowed their heads as he passed, he didn't acknowledge a soul.

The going was slow but their pace was steady; a feat Anaduilin achieved by guiding Lucy with an arm that remained permanently latched around her middle, his hand firmly gripping hers. The corridor was long and wide, the ceiling arched and greening with moss. Lucy could hear the constant drip of water and the roar of the ravine echoing from somewhere underneath. She sniffed, coughing briefly on the moisture-rich air. Lucy was slowly getting used to it, having spent a month in the dungeons, but the heavy oxygen was still uncomfortably difficult to process.

"Is there a river under the prison?" She asked Morwen, vaguely curious about the prospect. Morwen shrugged, her silver hair net shimmering against the low light of the torches. They were dimmed today, either because the daylight was shining in from the stone-cut hatches, or because the light itself wasn't needed.

"I do not know." Morwen admitted, staring straight ahead as she rubbed at her forehead. "When I was brought to the city, there was water flowing out from underneath it, yes? And a moat that looked like a river that circled the bottom, before it wound its way into the mountains. I am not sure where the water rests once it is beneath Gondolin."

They passed the door to the bunker-like room where Lucy had been questioned, walking even further down the hallway towards a wide, low-graded set of stairs. When they reached the stairs, the guards in front of them quickly scaled the set. Morwen picked up the edge of her skirt, following them in turn. Her slipper-clad feet tapped softly against the dampened stone.

Lucy glared at the stairwell, not looking forward to the prospect of climbing, but before she could take her first step Anaduilin was leaning down and sliding his arm all the way around her middle. His other arm went beneath her knees as he picked her up in a single fluid motion. Lucy did not like being picked up, or maybe it was safer to say that she didn't like surprises. She didn't make a noise when he lifted her, but she did flail about, eventually wrapping her arms around the ellon's neck for balance when he began to swiftly climb the stairs.

Anaduilin let her do so, but from the way he was biting the inside of his cheek he did not seem to like it, or was seriously considering the prospect of dropping her. Lucy was used to him being passive aggressive: to the silver-haired elf making barely-there snipes at her from beneath the cover of professionalism. To have him picking her up – much less helping her – was a strange, unpleasant sensation.

The warden's hair may have been tied back, but it was very long, as was typical of all the elves Lucy had seen, and there were wisps of it escaping from his knot to dance against the base of his neck. It was as soft as a baby's against Lucy's knuckles and just as fine, and it wasn't until he jerked his head away from her that Lucy realized that she'd begun fiddling with it, rubbing the strands between her fingers.

Morwen stood at the top of the stairs, her hands clasped together in front of her, a frown on her face as she waited for the two of them to finish ascending.

"You should not touch his hair." She said. "It is not proper. He will not like it."

Lucy dutifully removed her fingers from the wisps of his hair, and Anaduilin once again straightened his head. In an act of defiance she dropped her own head to rest it casually against the ellon's shoulder, her thick brown locks pooling messily beneath his chin. The elf tolerated this action, but only barely, and around her middle Lucy could feel his hand flexing in irritation.

"Why?" She asked Morwen, not quite innocently, looking at the woman with a half-lidded, heavy gaze. She was tired again, and cared not a whit about what the elves thought of her in general. "Limbrethil touches my hair all the time." Lucy paused, thinking back. "Maeglin did too."

"They are Noldor." Morwen said simply. "It is different for them, and you are a child in their eyes. Anaduilin, he is Sinda. His people think differently than those from the sea."

It was a simple explanation, and one that Lucy accepted readily enough. She was too tired and worn out to fight the woman needlessly on the subject. Anaduilin did seem to relax once she stopped trying to play with his hair, and when they reached the top of the stairs he put her down a bit gentler than before.

Anaduilin's gentleness was not really gentleness, of course. It was more of a carefully calculated set of actions, designed to minimize damage and maximize efficiency. There was very little humanity about it. Lucy was all right with this, oddly enough. She was comforted by predictability, and Anaduilin was nothing if not predictable in his hard-to-pinpoint passive disdain.

As the ellon helped her forward, Lucy once again found herself thankful for the elf's unerring dedication to routine.

* * *

When they emerged from the dungeons out into the daylight, Lucy was near-blinded by the change in brightness, letting out a small cry of distress.

It had been so long since she'd seen unfiltered sunlight that she wasn't ready for it, and the instant they emerged from the underground Lucy cringed, automatically burying her face in Anaduilin's side as she tried to escape the source. Outside, the whole area was comprised of pure white marble, seemingly designed to reflect the glare. Morwen was unaffected by the sudden shift in light and continued walking, but Anaduilin paused, readjusting his grip on Lucy so he could guide her properly while still letting her hide her face.

When Lucy finally lifted her head, peering out from underneath the curtain of her own hair, she discovered she actually couldn't see much at all. It was a brilliantly sunny day outside, but she was in an enclosed courtyard of sorts. The courtyard was an odd, oblong shape, with the white wall to her left jutting upwards about forty feet or so, seemingly three times as thick as the others.

It was the sort of wall Lucy assumed one would see on the outside of fortified castle, complete with silver-clad guards walking along the top. On the farthest side of the courtyard there was a large archway decorated in golden leaf, a cobblestone pathway leading through it on an upward incline deeper into the heart of the city. Another passageway beneath a slender tower was in front of them, and to the right there was an eleven-story building, more tall than wide and made entirely out of stone that was pale as alabaster. Everything about the courtyard was light and airy, with white marble walls against white stone floors and even whiter steps. On all sides Lucy could see the tips of tall buildings with sharply slanted roofs and spiraling towers, the sprawl of the city going upwards to staggering heights instead of out.

To the right of the courtyard, the buildings climbed upwards towards the city center. A singular white tower sat there, taller than all the others. The tip of it was gilt in gold. Morwen asked something of the nearest guard, pointing to the tower, and he responded in turn with a voice that echoed oddly from beneath his helmet.

Morwen turned to Lucy, nodding with her head towards the golden pinnacle.

"That is the King's Tower." She said. "The Tower of Turgon. It is where we are to go."

Lucy said nothing, craning her neck and squinting against the sunlight as she looked directly upwards. Everything was beautiful and bright and clean, the air thick but fresh and somewhat brisk. Above, she could see baby blue sky and wisp-like clouds. The courtyard was pleasantly warm beneath the sun. There was no sense of danger here, nor anything visible to indicate any sort of immediate alarm. It was so pleasant that if Morwen hadn't told her the elves were at war, Lucy would have never of guessed such a thing.

Anaduilin marched them into the passageway ahead, the one located beneath the delicate marble tower. The guards escorting them fanned out on either side. When they entered the corridor, Lucy blinked again, stumbling slightly as she readjusted to the new level of light. The silver-haired ellon kept a firm grip on her elbow as he guided her forward, but Lucy was unused to walking for so long, and after so much inactivity she was tiring noticeably.

Her mostly-healed leg was aching from use, her limbs shaking from lack of food and exercise. When Lucy tripped three times in a row, almost cracking her head open on a nearby pillar, Anaduilin bent down and picked her up again, carrying her the rest of the way there. Lucy collapsed against him gratefully, her equilibrium spinning. Morwen cast a worried glance in her direction, but said nothing.

The corridor was well kept, the curving walls covered in intricate carvings. There were no torches up here, as none were needed. In the light Lucy could see how truly sickly she had become, her complexion even more deathly than Maeglin's. With the exception of Anaduilin, Morwen, and the six silver-clad guards, the hallway was empty and devoid of life. The stillness of it gave the impression of a brightly lit mausoleum.

"This passage, it is a secret one, yes?" Morwen began as they walked further down the corridor. It seemed to curl inwards, up and to the right at the same time. Lucy surmised that they were heading deeper into the city. "Well, not so secret, I guess." The older woman corrected a moment later. "I cannot translate the word well enough, but Limbrethil, she told that me this way is used by the guards to travel to the Tower. The place where your trial will be held."

Lucy blinked sluggishly against Anaduilin's shoulder, her response somewhat slurred.

"Is there a courthouse there?"

Morwen frowned and seemed ready to shrug, but then she stopped midway, settling on shaking her head instead. There was a perplexed expression on her face, her voice echoing eerily along the empty marbled hallway.

"This _courthouse_ word, I do not know it." She admitted. "But I do not think so, if I am understanding what you say is right. The King's Tower, they have not told me what it looks like, but Limbrethil has said it is where the Council Chamber is. The King holds his audience there."

"How are they going to try me, if there's no courthouse?" Lucy asked. "You need a Jury, and a Judge. I want a lawyer, too. Everyone gets a lawyer. It's the law."

Morwen's mouth twisted into a frown.

"These words, this _jury _and _lawyer_, I do not know them, although they **will** judge you, to see if can be saved or not. The only law here is the law of the Noldor. But the trial, I am not so sure _trial_ is the right word to use, yes? It is the proper translation, but I do not know how Noldor go about these things. Sindar, their justice is swift. If you are guilty, they will kill you and be done with it. Limbrethil, she tells me this method is very crude. They would still kill you if you were full-grown, but the Noldor think you are a child, and children are… flexible. Less set in their ways. They can be saved. The elves want to talk to you, I think. Only talk. To question you about the books and the scrolls."

Morwen then launched into an explanation of what Lucy should and shouldn't do during the so-called trial: how she should act, the proper way to respond to questions, to mind her manners and tell the truth. The elves would think her too damaged if all she told was lies. The more Morwen explained their situation, the more peevish and ill-tempered Lucy became. Morwen talked and talked without saying very little at all, and rarely did her explanations make sense.

Lucy wondered if Morwen talked because she was nervous. She wondered if Anaduilin was annoyed because the woman seemed incapable of silencing herself, the closer they came to their destination. Lucy knew **she** was annoyed. More and more, she felt like misbehaving, and soon Morwen's nervous chatter began to trigger another headache.

Finally Lucy could take no more of it. She asked a single question, simply to see if it would keep the woman quiet.

"If I read them everything in the books, will they let me go?" She asked. Her head was pounding, the world spinning, and although being carried by Anaduilin was preferable to walking, the elf himself was not so comfortable. His tunic had small silver studs all across it – some sort of built-in armor – and the nubs of them were digging into her skin. All Lucy wanted to do was to go back to her cell and sleep for the rest of the day.

Morwen shrugged, her expression growing severe.

"I do not know." She admitted, then paused, her words turning ominous. "To be truthful, I do not know if either of us can go. I have heard a rumor that the King does not let anyone leave the city once they are here. I am not sure if this is true."

After this portentous omission, Morwen fell silent. Lucy did too. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life trapped in the city. She had been planning on dying hand-in-hand with Tommy, after all. Here, there was nothing but malaise and moisture and too-thick air, and dark-haired elf lords that were far beyond her comprehension. Silently, Lucy decided that if she were ever let out of her cell she would jump from one of Gondolin's tallest towers. If she could fall into Middle Earth, then there must be a way to fall **out** of it as well.

The worst-case scenario was her brain splattering against the stone steppes, just like Tommy's. Lucy didn't think that was so bad at all.

They walked along the corridor for ten minutes more. After, they emerged into an antechamber filled with large marble pillars and a single, sharply arched window to the left. Anaduilin began ascending up a narrow marble staircase to the right. Morwen talked to Lucy as they climbed, mostly about mundane things, and seemingly to calm herself down. At the top of the narrow stairs they came to a small landing in front of a large gilded pair of doors.

The entrance was guarded by a pair of golden-helmed guards, each of them dressed in ivory and russet red. There was an air of importance about the doors and the way the guards held themselves. Lucy assumed that they had reached the council chamber.

Just before they entered Anaduilin set Lucy down, righting her onto her feet. Lucy swayed as the ellon stepped away from her to bound up the steps to speak to one of the sentries. Morwen quickly came forward to take the silver elf's place.

"Now remember what I told you." Morwen said in a hush, tightly gripping Lucy's hand in her own as they started walking up the short flight of stairs to the doors. She put her other arm around Lucy, rubbing her hand up and down her arm in comfort as she urged Lucy to step forward. Lucy did so, but wished she didn't. Her head was pounding fiercely.

"If you follow my instructions, behave yourself and answer truthfully, you will be fine. I am sure of it. Noldor, they do not like hurting children. No elves like hurting children. If you are an orphan, they will like it even less."

Morwen was nervous. Very, very nervous, and in a very overt way. Lucy could feel the woman's anxiety coming off her in waves, and this close she could see that Morwen was perspiring despite the briskness of the air. Her complexion was slightly peakish.

"Why do you care?" Lucy asked, genuinely curious. Morwen leaned in close to her ear and gripped her hand, speaking low just as the reached the top of the stairs.

"Because." She said. "If they think you are corrupt, they will kill me too."

Lucy looked up at that. And instead of Morwen standing beside her, Lucy saw a corpse.

It was Morwen, but not Morwen, as if all of Morwen's exterior varnish had been stripped away. Beside her was a woman much thinner than the one she knew, almost wasted looking, her face pinched with hunger and her eyes white with decay.

Morwen's throat was slit from ear to ear. There was a sheet of black blood spilling down her front. Lucy let out a ragged gasp and tried to jerk away. As she did so, the wraith-woman looked at her.

For a second Lucy saw the face of a monster before it flickered to back Morwen's and then reversed, like a glitching roll of film at the very end of a tape. A second later, the glitching receded, and the woman she knew was once again in place. Morwen was looking at her with concern, her grip on Lucy's elbow almost painfully tight. Her well-kept nails were digging into Lucy's arm, and the woman's flesh felt as cold as ice. Her dark eyes seemed too bright.

"What's wrong, Sweetness?" Morwen asked. And Lucy couldn't read her. She couldn't **read** her. She couldn't see the insides. There was an edge to Morwen's voice.

Ahead, Anaduilin was looking back at them, his face slightly animated in question. Morwen turned to stare straight ahead as if nothing had happened, an expression of false cheer on her face. Her back was straight, her profile arresting but utterly normal as she guided Lucy forward.

_I'm imagining it_, Lucy told herself, blinking repeatedly in the hopes that it would clear her vision. _I'm imagining it. I have to be_.

The doors swung open, and Anaduilin stood to the side to let them enter. Morwen gripped her arm. Lucy tried hard not to gag. There was nothing wrong with Morwen. There wasn't. No matter how hard Lucy stared at the woman beside her, the visage of the starving, mutilated wraith never returned. She was just sick, and the sickness was making her see things that weren't there. She almost believed her own excuse.

They entered the Tower of the King.

* * *

**Author's Note**

So. I had planned for Glorfindel to finally make an appearance, but this chapter was so long I had to split it in two. My apologies to all. On the upside, this means there will be another update very shortly, as the next chapter this is all but complete. Just fixing up a few more things.

Next time: Glorfindel and Turgon finally make an appearance, and Maeglin returns! Once again, a huge thank you to all those who reviewed/favorited/followed. My day job is very distracting right now, so the feedback helps to remind me that I have to finish this too. Commitments are commitments, and must be fulfilled.

Side note on the "Eleven Houses of Gondolin," as described by Morwen: for those eagle-eyed readers out there who are familiar with Tolkien's expanded universe, you'll know that Gondolin had **twelve **houses when it fell. The twelfth house – and smallest– belonged to Tuor, but this story begins several decades before Tuor arrives. As far as I've been able to tell from my readings, there was no twelfth house before Tuor came along, so to keep things simple I've just stuck to eleven. If anyone has any information to the contrary, feel free to correct me.

* * *

**Glossary**

A small disclaimer for the word _n__othrim_: I've been trying to research the proper wording for "House of" in Sindarin, but I've come across conflicting reports. Best I can tell, _nothrim _works as class plural that roughly translates to "those of the house". Once again, apologies for the bad Sindarin.

Nothrim Duilin – _Those of the House Duilin_

Lucy mellon nîn - _Lucy (is) my friend_

Nothrim Maeglin – _Those of the House Maeglin_

Hana lhû – _It's time_

No bân – _Be careful/good_/_fair_


	6. The Baby-Witch

Chapter VI: The Baby-Witch

* * *

The council chamber was massive, oblong and shaped like an oval, the ceiling vaulted with delicate buttresses and gilt with sheets of gold.

Every surface of the room – from the marble pillars to the roof top above – were covered in intricate carvings, depicting scenes of battle and beings that looked like elves, only they seemed to be taller. The marble here was a warmer color, almost ivory in tone. Lining either side of the room were giant, sharply arched windows. They were open to the outside world, letting in streams of sunlight and the roar of city life from several stories below.

From where she stood Lucy could see white-winged birds flocking outside the chamber. Beyond that were the tips of the city towers, clustered like delicate icicles sparkling beneath the ever-blue sky. Further on there was the ring of the encircling mountains, their peaks frosted with snow. Everything in Lucy's field of vision was shades of blue and white and gold and silver, and even though it was warm inside the room, the whole area reminded Lucy of ice.

The gilded doors slammed shut behind them as Morwen guided Lucy forward. Anaduilin fell into step just ahead of them, his back straight and expression sombre as he strode briskly across the room.

The golden-helmed guards were everywhere. There was one standing in front of every pillar and two abreast of each window. At the end of the chamber there was a raised dais that spanned the width of the room. There were twelve marble chairs on the platform, all of which one were occupied. Lucy couldn't see the details of them from where she was standing, but she could tell the largest chair – the one in the middle – was inhabited by an ellon with exceptionally dark hair.

Lucy couldn't shake the feeling of wrongness that had come about her; the dread she had felt upon seeing the Not-Morwen with the wraith-like face. Her worry became so great that she actually stumbled in alarm, her clumsiness made worse by her already-persistence illness. When Morwen gripped her elbow to help her stand, Lucy was shaking visibly.

Morwen put her other hand to Lucy's forehead, feeling her temperature. Lucy let her, her cheeks feeling hot. The world was spinning. The sensation of wrongness got worse.

"Oh no, Sweetness, no." Morwen murmured. "It is not good. You are burning up. Limbrethil, she was right."

Lucy said nothing, swaying where she stood. Morwen gripped her even more tightly, her arm going around Lucy's middle as she supported Lucy's weight with her own. Once again, they began to walk. Morwen looked straight ahead towards the elves sitting on the platform, her smile forced.

"Be good, Sweetness." She said through gritted teeth, rubbing Lucy's hand with hers. "All you have to do is answer their questions as I told you, and you'll be fine."

"Do you think I work for Sauron too?" Lucy asked, her tongue feeling thick inside her mouth. Morwen's smile remained rigid even as she shook her head.

"No. You are very strange, but I do not think you serve Sauron." There was a pause. "At least, not willingly."

It was not a comforting proclamation. Lucy felt sick.

"I think I'm going to throw up." She told Morwen with all seriousness. The woman held her close.

"No you won't, Sweetness. You'll be fine, see? You'll answer all their questions, and then you'll go back and you can sleep. Everything will be fine. I am sure of it."

Lucy didn't think so, but said nothing more. Her stomach wouldn't allow it.

They approached the marble dais, the guards thick on either side of them. A breeze wafted in from one of the open windows, rustling Lucy's hair. She could hear the distant roar of organic traffic coming from outside the tower; a mixture of people talking, animals braying and children laughing. Lucy was able to make out the details of the raised platform by now. In the very center sat a large, imposing elf dressed all in ivory, his flowing robes edged with delicate patterns of gold along the neckline and cuffs. His hair was jet black, slick and glossy and falling to mid-back, and around his head there was an intricate coronet inlaid with red stones that looked like garnets.

Morwen nodded briefly to the ellon, speaking low into Lucy's ear as they approached.

"That's the King." She said. "The Noldo prince I was telling you about. His name is Turgon."

Turgon's nose was straight, like all of the Noldor Lucy had seen so far. His eyes were a pale gray and his countenance handsome, but if it hadn't been for the healthy glow to his skin and his slightly more masculine features, Lucy might have mistaken him for Maeglin. The chair to the left of the King was conspicuously absent, but Maeglin himself was seated beside the garnet-crowned King on the right, dressed all in black and just as lovely as Lucy remembered him. The lissom, dark-haired elf looked slightly ill, and he was even paler than usual.

Maeglin seemed a vision of death compared to his King, but the family resemblance between the two of them was unmistakable. Lucy became angry with elf lord again, suddenly and irrationally so. Maeglin had done nothing but sit there, but just seeing him was a trigger in itself for all the repressed emotions she had hidden over the past month and a bit. Lucy was keenly aware of how conscious he was of her; of how uncomfortable she was making him, just by being there. As Maeglin glared at Lucy with his huge black eyes, the ellon flexed his pale fingers against his black clad knee in a gesture that Lucy unmistakably recognized as anger. The dislike was mutual, it seemed. Lucy was glad for it.

It was then that she decided to do something stupid. The first of many stupid things in a relatively short time period to come, but she was sick and anxious.

"Hello Maeglin." Lucy said with an ugly sort of smile, not loudly, but clear enough that everyone heard her.

Instantly Morwen clapped her hand over Lucy's mouth, silencing her. The King slowly turned to look at his nephew with a heavy-lidded stare, a single bejeweled finger tapping against the armrest of his throne in question. Maeglin's cheeks were flushed a delicate pink, the only spots of color on his face. His stare was dark and jagged as an obsidian blade as he shot a furious glance at Lucy.

Lucy was feeling incredibly ill, and by now she was seeing almost double when she moved too quickly, but she got a perverse satisfaction out of making Maeglin upset. Tommy would be proud of her, she knew. Tommy hated Maeglin, so Lucy hated Maeglin. It was how the world worked, with everything in its place.

Her hand still over Lucy's mouth, Morwen said something apologetic sounding to Anaduilin. He had stopped just ahead and was glaring back at them as well. Morwen then turned to Lucy, speaking softly but in a frantic manner.

"What did I just say? Oh Sweetness, please **think**." She begged, before sliding her hand up to feel Lucy's forehead. Her fingers were cold against Lucy's temple. Even though she couldn't get the vision of the Morwen-wraith out of her head, Lucy was so hot she felt like she was in a sauna, so she leaned into the woman's touch.

"You are burning up." Morwen said. "This is not good, not good at all. I am not suited for this, I'm not. Ai, I wish I were dealing with Sindar. They are much more agreeable than this. So much simpler."

Morwen turned to Anaduilin, speaking quietly to him and with great alarm. In the background the King of Gondolin conversed with Maeglin, who had begun to slouch in his chair. His dark eyes were downcast, his spider-like lashes fanning out against his cheeks. It made him look exceptionally submissive, and Lucy cared not at all. She was feeling too irrationally angry at seeing him again to heed any warnings, from Morwen or anyone else. She wanted to make Maeglin hurt.

"I didn't say anything bad." Lucy told Morwen, interrupting the woman as she spoke to Anaduilin. Not once did she stop glaring at the dark-haired elf lord. "I just wanted to say _hello_."

Morwen bit her bottom lip in frustration. "That's not the point." She said stiffly. Lucy was too far-gone to care. Still, the feeling of wrongness that plagued her persisted. There was another feeling too besides the wrongness. It was an almost prickling sensation between her shoulder blades: the unmistakable feeling of being watched. **Everyone** was watching her, with expressions ranging from mild annoyance to outright alarm, but this person's gaze was more intense than all the others, and it wasn't coming from Maeglin.

Dull-eyed and fighting back the desire to vomit, Lucy looked instinctively to the left, towards the source.

A tall elf sat in one of the twelve chairs, dressed all in white and gold and ivory. His back was rigid in agitation, his jaw clenched as he worked his long fingers repeatedly against the arm rests of his chair.

The ellon had gold hair. Not a pale blond, but a deep golden hue so rich and burnished it looked like liquid metal. In fact, Lucy's first impression of the elf was that he was all hair, as his was as thick as a lion's mane, falling in heavy waves down his shoulders and over his arms to end somewhere past his hips. Part of his hair was tied away from his face, but there was just so much of it that the majority of his golden tresses hung loose.

Immediately, the elf reminded Lucy of Rapunzel.

Rapunzel was staring at her in such a way that Lucy got the distinct impression that he didn't know how not to. He had sapphire blue eyes, deep in chroma and bright as his endless hair. The face that was turned towards her was oddly young and strikingly beautiful, his features twisted into an expression of distress. The ellon was pale like all the other elves there, but his complexion was akin to porcelain, and he looked even more doll-like than Lucy. The only reminder that he **wasn't** a doll was the golden-sheathed greatsword resting by the left side of his chair.

When the elf realized that Lucy was staring back, he tensed up further, digging his fingers into the armrests so hard his knuckles turned white. Absently, Lucy decided that he must have been ridiculously pretty as a child. She had a brief moment where she imagined a little boy running across the throne room on unsteady legs with golden hair longer than he was, before Anaduilin came over and re-gripped her elbow. He took her from Morwen's grasp, steering her forward with more force than necessary.

"Pada." He commanded softly. Morwen translated the command to "walk" with an unsteady voice, looking at Lucy with concern.

At Rapunzel's side a black-haired ellon dressed in pale blue leaned sideways, placing a delicate hand against the other elf's arm as he spoke in a calming tone. Whatever he said did no good, as Rapunzel only grew more agitated, answering the other rapidly and with audible concern. Lucy didn't know what was going on, but at her elbow Anaduilin was biting the inside of his cheek, a sure sign he was upset. On his throne the Noldo prince was leaning his head against his chair, staring upwards and clenching his jaw as if searching for some vestige of patience.

When Lucy took a step forward and sagged noticeably, nearly collapsing in Anaduilin's grasp, Rapunzel immediately leaned forward, gripping the armrests of his chair as he made to rise towards her. The ellon beside him slapped his arm with a whip-fast movement, making a _tching_ noise in admonishment as he pushed his companion back into his seat.

"Laurëfindil, daro ha!" He commanded in a hissing whisper.

The golden elf sat, albeit barely. He tapped the heel of his foot repeated against the ground as he stared blatantly at Lucy. It was as if he could barely afford to sit still. At the end of the row several chairs down, another elf lord let out a sigh in exasperation, resting his head in his hands.

Lucy took another step. This time she did collapse, held up only by Anaduilin's arms. The silver-haired warden reached beneath her armpits, carrying Lucy up the last few steps to deposit her in a heap at the top of the dais. She immediately sunk into a crouch to level her center of gravity, trying to combat the dizziness.

Rapunzel squirmed, but managed to stay seated. Anaduilin retreated several paces, but remained within arm's length of Lucy, folding his slender hands in front of him beneath his cloak and standing to attention. Morwen stepped forward, bowing low before the King, after which she greeted him in elvish fashion and conversed briefly with the Noldo prince.

Turgon had a deep voice, smooth and mellow and glacial as winter. Lucy would have thought from the way he spoke that nothing could get a rise out of the King, but there was a flinty hardness to his gaze that spoke of stubbornness, and the way his fingers twitched against his armrest implied otherwise. Morwen retreated to Lucy's side, never turning her back on the King and bowing low.

When she reached Lucy she crouched beside her, looking from Lucy to the King. Her tone was soft and encouraging as she explained what would come next.

"To make things simple, the King says he will be the one to ask all the questions, and any questions the other lords have they will ask through him. I will say what he says, and you will answer, understand? And you must answer truthfully. Turgon, he is a **good** Noldor, he bade me tell you. He wants you to know he is not like the Fëanorians, and if you are honest with him he will treat you well. He says he is very sorry that his nephew kept you in the dungeons for so long. It was over-zealous of him, and Maeglin is young. He means you no ill will."

"I don't care." Lucy said miserably, her patience shot as she swayed where she crouched upon the platform. She was feeling sick. So very, very sick. The sensation of impending doom was getting worse, and she was hot and cold all over. Something was definitely wrong.

"I don't know anything." She continued. "I wasn't supposed to be here. This was Tommy's idea, not mine. I want to see Tommy's body. Limbrethil was right. I'm sick. I want my cell."

Morwen gave her a sympathetic smile, putting a hand to her shoulder. Lucy shuddered in revulsion, remembering the vision of the woman's wraith-like face. No matter how long Lucy stared at her, Morwen remained the same; all shades of gray and constantly nervous. Her visage didn't flicker.

_I'm imagining it. _She repeated inside her head. _It isn't real._

"Please, Sweetness, just bear it for the time being." Morwen said. "It will be over soon." Lucy hunched inwards, wrapping her arms around her legs and burying her head against her knees to keep herself from vomiting. In his seat, Rapunzel made a sympathetic noise and made to rise, the action seemingly without thought. The black-haired ellon beside him immediately pushed the blond elf down a second time. The King shot them both an unimpressed look.

Turgon turned to Morwen, speaking to her in an even tone. Morwen relayed his words and Lucy listened dejectedly. Beside the King, Maeglin looked just as miserable. Disarmingly so. Lucy almost felt sorry for him.

"The King says if you are a former ward of his cousins, you may known his name as Turukáno, as they prefer to speak in the tongue of old. Among the Sindar and the rest of the Noldor, however, he is known as Turgon, Son of Fingolfin, Lord of Nevrast, King of Gondolin, and brother to the current High King Fingon. He wishes to know your name."

"Lucy." Said Lucy miserably, not looking up. Morwen relayed this information to the King, who did not look impressed one way or another. He continued talking. Morwen spoke as he spoke.

"How old are you, Lucy?"

"Sixteen." Lucy said.

Rapunzel drew in a sharp breath at this, and Maeglin looked sideways at his uncle with a guilty expression, his nervousness making him seem much younger than he had before. The King could have been made of stone, for all the concern he showed.

"Are you an orphan?" Morwen translated, and Lucy shrugged, pressing her head harder against her knees.

"I guess I am." She finally admitted. "I don't think I'm going back."

The King leaned to the side as he rubbed at his forehead, balancing his temple against the tips of his elegant fingers as if trying to dispel a headache. When he spoke, his eyes were closed, his voice strained. Morwen's voice rang clearly through the hallway as she translated for him.

"The King wishes to know if you hail from Fëanorian territory. If you served his cousins, and if so, which one. He does not wish to bring up painful memories for you, as the Fëanorians are very good at making orphans of others and he suspects this to be your fate, but he must ask you all the same. You come bearing books speaking of Silmarils, and Silmarils and Fëanorians go hand in hand. This is never a good sign."

"I don't know what Fëanorians are."

The King remained blank faced at this, but eventually said something to Morwen. She translated it in a halting manner with a questioning tone to her voice, as if she wasn't sure if what she was saying was correct.

"He says if you do not know who the Fëanorians are, then it is of little concern, as they are simply another group of Noldor. Instead, wishes to know where you hail from, if not from the north."

"Earth."

A brief pause followed.

"The King wishes to know if you mean Middle Earth."

"No, I mean _Earth_ Earth." Lucy said. "What did they do with Tommy? I want to see Tommy's body."

Morwen's expression was apologetic as she spoke.

"The King promises to show you the body after the meeting, so long as you answer all his questions truthfully."

"I want to see Tommy **now**." Lucy insisted. Morwen didn't translate this.

"The King wishes to know where _Earth_ is." The woman said instead. Lucy didn't look up, feeling belligerent.

"Nowhere he can find it." She slurred into her knees. "If he wants to go there, he'll have to jump off a building. I'm in the wrong city. Tommy said we needed to go to a white city, but it's not this one. I have to talk to Gandalf. I think he can send me back."

This explanation seemed to cause confusion. For some odd reason the mention of "jumping off buildings" made Maeglin pale past the point of no return, turning his countenance sickly. His reaction was so noticeable that the King actually put a hand to the younger elf's shoulder to steady him, squeezing in comfort. Down the row of seats to the right, a brown-haired ellon with pale blue eyes and dark navy robes shot his companion a heartfelt look of sympathy.

The King waited until the moment passed. When Morwen translated for him, her voice was heavy with trepidation.

"The King and his Lords do not know this name of _Gandalf. _The King wishes to know if Sauron told you to jump off a tower. If he sent you here either by his own volition, or on the orders of his master."

Lucy swayed, turning her head sideways against her knees, swallowing heavily to fight the nausea. "No." Lucy said, then amended "I don't know. It was a building, not a tower. Tommy said we needed to jump off it. She wanted to be a prophet, to come here and save people. A lot of elves are going to die."

"And how do you know this?"

Lucy shrugged. "I read it in a book. Tommy's book." Then, without thought "The Dark Lord, he's going to find this city. He's going to find Gondolin and he's going to burn it to the ground. Everyone's going to die. And there's this place, called Beleriand. It's going to sink under the sea."

Her proclamation – once translated – did not go over well at all.

The King's expression became frigid, his anger apparent in his deadly calm. Beside him Maeglin was the vision of a corpse – the loveliest corpse ever, Lucy was willing to admit – his guilty expression replaced with the visible stirrings of panic. The other elf lords were talking quietly amongst themselves, their voices combining like the gentle murmur of a brook, but there was a sense of trepidation to the air. A feeling of _violence_. Morwen was overtly upset. She shot Lucy a glance, one that translated to a muted plea for mercy and the unspoken desire for her to remain silent.

Lucy ignored it, as she was having a hard time concentrating. The blond-haired ellon was staring at her again. He'd never actually stopped.

The elf had the most straightforward gaze Lucy had ever seen, and surrounded by all that golden hair it made his melancholic expression rather heartbreaking. Rapunzel was one of the beautiful people: those beautiful people with processed veneers that Lucy hated so much. Only, the ellon didn't seem to have a filter to hide the ugliness, at least none that Lucy could discern. She couldn't see the rot.

The entire thing was unnatural, so Lucy looked away. He didn't. His staring actually got worse.

The King finally spoke, eying her with an intensity that he had not possessed before. Lucy chose to avoid his gaze, turning her head to look at Maeglin instead. She found him staring back, his expression complex and indiscernible. Not once did they break eye contact with each other as Turgon voiced his thoughts.

"The King, he asks how you know this." Morwen said, her voice wavering with something that sounded like fear. "He asks if this is what Sauron told you."

"No." Said Lucy. "But if you bring me the books, I can tell you how your world falls apart."

With that proclamation, the King finally seemed to snap.

His fingers clenched around the armrests of his chair, his jaw locked in anger as the elf lords around him resumed talking. He looked ready to strangle someone – preferably Lucy – and when he turned to speak to a dark-haired ellon dressed in purple sitting several seats down, his tone was harsh and unforgiving. After a brief conversation with the purple-robed lord, he turned towards the end of the chamber to look in the direction of the gilded doors.

"**Calagor**!" He bellowed, his tone thunderous.

From behind one of the pillars an ellon dressed in black and navy blue quickly stepped forward, striding across the room to the dais. There was a white bow strapped across his back. When he reached them he bowed low, his dark hair falling out from underneath his wide hood and his gray eyes over-bright.

"Nîn Aran." He said in a clear, even voice. It took Lucy a moment to realize that he was the archer that had found her. The one that had knocked her unconscious on the mountain slope.

The King and Calagor began talking. Morwen translated none of it, though her face grew paler and paler still. What seemed to follow was a series of witnesses, as each elf that Lucy had met since falling into Tommy's world was brought before the King to give their testimonies.

Slowly, Lucy's sense of wrongness grew, a twisting feeling beneath her breastbone beginning to grow. The King became more and more impatient. Anaduilin for his part remained eerily calm when questioned, his back straight and expression blank. The only person they didn't summon was Limbrethil. Lucy wondered at this, but said nothing, as she was feeling too ill and out of sorts to make a complaint about it one way or another. Every now and then she was asked a question by the King, which was translated haltingly through Morwen. They were simple questions, like the name of her parents and what tribe of _Edain _she hailed from, or if she had any brothers of guardians that could take care of her.

Lucy answered as best she could, curling even further into herself to try and negate the nausea. With each question she was asked it became apparent that the idea that she wasn't from Middle Earth at **all** was something that King couldn't understand, or wasn't willing to process. Not once were the books brought forward. Lucy was annoyed by this, because she was sure it would solve the problem that much quicker.

Rapunzel was still staring at her. Lucy wished he would stop.

The golden elf was squirming in his seat again. Visibly squirming, shifting back and forth and alternating between slouching too low and sitting too straight, like a petulant child desperate to escape a meeting. His ivory colored clothes were rustling loudly against his seat, his golden armor scraping over the marble. He went from staring at Lucy with such intensity that it was to the point of rudeness, to shooting frantic looks at the black-haired ellon sitting next to him. His companion was rubbing his forehead in annoyance while simultaneously trying to calm the golden-haired elf down.

Rapunzel was squirming so much that Lucy was finding it hard to concentrate, and the other elves were noticing as well. Eventually the Noldo prince looked at the elf lord, his gray gaze hooded. Lucy could have sworn she saw one of his pointed ears twitch in annoyance.

"Glorfindel, lín iest na pent?" He asked the elf, who was in the middle of drumming his long fingers in agitation against his armrests. The ellon was gnawing on his bottom lip as if trying to prevent himself from saying something stupid. Lucy understood none of what the prince said, save for the name. Glorfindel. _Glorfindel_.

It was **him**. Tommy's sun god.

Immediately Lucy wished she were standing on the tallest tower she could find. She wished she were standing closer, so she could push him off of it.

The minute the king finished speaking, Glorfindel started, pontificating to the Noldo prince with a voice that was clear and musical as he gestured hurriedly towards Lucy. The black-haired elf beside him cringed, leaning forward in his chair and making shushing noises as he raised both his hands, trying to calm Glorfindel down. The king glared at them both, his countenance frigid.

Morwen leaned in close to Lucy's ear and nodded in Glorfindel's direction, speaking low as they watched the scene unfold.

"That is Glorfindel." She said quickly, eying the altercation with trepidation. "You see, the blond one? He is the Lord of the House of the Golden Flower."

"I know who he is." Lucy seethed. Morwen looked at her in surprise.

"You do?"

"I do." Lucy was shooting off her mouth before she could help herself, heedless of the consequences. He was the reason Tommy never loved Lucy. The whole reason why she was here in the first place. For a brief, blinding second she was so angry she could barely speak, tripping over her already awkward words.

"I saw him." She said in a rush, all while Glorfindel argued with the king. "I saw him from before. I know how he dies."

Instantly Morwen began to panic, mimicking the black haired ellon beside Glorfindel as she tried to calm Lucy down with gentle hands.

"Sweetness, remember what I said about speaking? Hush, slower, let us not be so hasty –"

"I see everything." Lucy continued, clenching her fists. "A balrog kills him. A balrog comes to the city and burns it down, and it takes Glorfindel with him."

Morwen's look changed to one of horror.

At that moment Glorfindel seemed to say something that did not go over well with all involved, because he pointed to Maeglin, snarling out a series of furious words in a melodious tongue that didn't sound like Sindarin. The king went pale. Beside him, Maeglin turned red in the face and stood in a rush.

Morwen wasn't paying attention, so focused she was on Lucy. "A _balrog_?" She gasped.

And then, everyone was looking at Lucy.

If she were a wiser person – a less-destructive person – Lucy would have known to quit before things got out of hand. She would have thought her next words through. But Lucy was awkward and unhinged, prone to saying the most inappropriate things at the most awful of times. She was already stressed out. Tommy was dead on the mountains, and Glorfindel standing there, a visible mockery of all Lucy had worked towards and failed to achieve. He didn't know how he'd stolen Tommy's heart from her without so much as a glance. The knowledge of this was inconsolable.

Shaking from the stress, Lucy stood and raised her hand, pointing directly at the golden-haired elf lord. He turned to look at her head-on, gazing at her with bright blue eyes.

"You are Glorfindel?" Lucy asked, speaking clearly so all could hear. Glorfindel perked up at the sound of his own name, his expression morphing to one of surprise, then confusion.

"Lín istas nin?" He asked, almost hopeful. Morwen was still trying to quiet her. Lucy kept going.

"I know you." She said. "It's your fault. **Your** fault I'm here. But you die, and the city burns. A balrog is coming for you. It's coming for you and it's going to kill you –"

And then suddenly, Lucy wasn't there.

Suddenly she was somewhere else, standing atop a cliff face where a waterfall had run dry. And there, far below her in a hidden valley, was Rivendell.

Tommy's Rivendell, with all its arches and spiraling smooth steps, only this one was decaying and abandoned, leeched of color. Around it the trees were dead and bare, their wood white as snow. On the air there was the smell of something burning, and overhead the sky was dark with ash.

A second before – even less than that – Lucy had been standing in the throne room of Gondolin, far away in time and space from anything that remotely resembled Rivendell. Yet she was here now, and Rivendell was dead. There was no council sitting in eleven white chairs. No golden elf lord with ridiculously long hair begging mercy to the king, his face a mask of confusion.

Lucy was all alone atop a cliff-face, and she could feel **everything**, from the dirt beneath her toes to the way the airborne ash brushed against her skin. The air was thinner here, like most of the oxygen had been burnt away. Far thinner than it had been in Gondolin, and utterly devoid of moisture.

Reeling and discombobulated, unsure if what she was seeing was real, Lucy took a shaky step forward. One of her legs dipped beneath her weight as her muscles gave way and she lost her balance. Just as she was beginning to fall there was a flash of washed-out yellow from somewhere down in the valley; the sound of someone frantically screaming her name.

Then, suddenly, the world shifted again, the ground beneath her twisting into a nebulous miasma before whiplashing back into a solid state. Instead of standing in Gondolin or atop a cliff face overlooking Rivendell, Lucy was in a room. A dark, cavernous room made entirely of black; black iron floors against black iron walls, with inky tapestries hanging from blackened rods and motifs of savage red eyes staring down at her.

Sitting in front of her there was a man. A juggernaut of a man hidden in shadow, save for the hint of molten orange eyes that glowed with their own liquid sort of light. The man with eyes like magma let out a harsh gasp when he saw Lucy standing there, rising quickly and striding towards her. He was all fire and flame and ruin, his voice booming as his black robes billowed around him.

"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?" He yelled at her, so loudly that the walls trembled and the floor cracked and Lucy covered her ears to try and dispel the noise. Beneath her hands her eardrums burst and bled. Everything was ringing. "WHERE DID YOU GO?" He demanded.

Lucy didn't have an answer for him, even as he marched towards her and screamed obscenities and she whimpered and cowered and hunched herself into a ball. He was burning, so hot Lucy could feel the heat coming off of him from over a dozen feet away.

Then as he reached for her, time and space shifted again. She wasn't in the room anymore. Lucy was somewhere else.

She was standing on a narrow stone bridge, overlooking an endless mountain chasm. An old man in tattered gray robes and a pointed gray hat was standing in front of her. Beyond him there was a writhing mass of flames that screeched in fury as the stranger raised a pale sword high into the air.

"You cannot pass!" The man was yelling. "The dark fire will not avail you, Flame of Udûn!"

And Lucy knew him.

She knew the name of the gray-hatted wizard. She knew the name of the bridge she was standing on and the mountain she was inside of, where Durin's people had dug too greedily and too deep. She had seen it all before in Tommy's movies and Tommy's novels, only it was real now, and the fire and heat were all around her.

Behind her on the other side of the bridge there was frantic screaming, nearly drowned out by the roar of the flames. In front of her the wizard was still yelling. The flames surged forward, licking their way over mouth of the bridge. "You cannot pass!" Gandalf bellowed, raising his staff and his sword.

And then from the flames, **two** balrogs emerged. Two monsters instead of one, belching fire and cracking whips.

It was over in an instant.

The first balrog took a step forward. Before Lucy could process what was happening, its giant foot was slamming downward, its massive hand reaching over to swipe the old wizard off the bridge and into its mouth, biting him in two. Behind Lucy there was a piercing wail – the scream of someone in the depths of despair – and it was only then that her brain abruptly shut down, her body shocked still in terror.

Lucy stared at the demons and they stared at her, the flames that danced around their feet burning their way ever closer. The second balrog gazed at Lucy with a strange sort of recognition, letting out a thunderous huff. Moments later it began lumbering forward, the stone bridge shaking with each step it took.

The creature moved closer with a confident, swaying gait, wings spread and horned head held high. When it got to Lucy it stepped over her and continued walking, careful not to knock her off the bridge as it marched towards the rest of the Fellowship waiting on the other side. The first balrog followed the second, spitting out the rest of Gandalf's body as it stepped onto the bridge of Khazad-dûm. Its fire whip twisted wildly around it, and as it approached her it ignored Lucy as the other had done.

When the balrog passed its whip grazed by, so close Lucy could feel the release of heat. Her hair spiraled around her with the sudden influx of wind, her nightgown pressing up against her legs. And then there was **burning**. A burning sensation all along her back, the feeling of flesh opening and parting from muscle and bone.

Lucy screamed.

When she did, the second balrog turned around and roared at the first, cracking its whip across its companion's face in what could almost pass for _admonishment_. Then time was shifting again, the world whip-lashing away.

When it solidified a second later, Lucy was once again in Gondolin.

She was back in the First Age, standing in the center of the room, her clothes blackened and falling off of her in pieces, the skin along her back sliced open and covered in soot. Beside her Morwen collapsed, letting out a strangled sound of surprise. The rest of the room was silent. The blood vessels in Lucy's eyes had burst to the point of turning red. She was shaking all over, her hands curled into rigid claws from the shock. Her nose was bleeding so profusely she was choking on the redness, the fluid streaming down her front to patter noisily against the pristine white floor.

Everything was exactly as she had left it, with the elf king sitting on his marble throne and Glorfindel's hands raised in gesture as he talked. Morwen was to her right, and the rest of the elf lords – with the exception of Maeglin – were still seated in their chairs.

All of them were looking at her, and Lucy was looking back, but she was shaking, and **shaking**, the shock and confusion wearing off to be replaced by blinding pain. All she could see was shadow and flames whipping around her; the dead Rivendell and the man with eyes like magma; the two balrogs that had crossed the bridge of Khazad-dûm instead of one.

Lucy coughed wetly, blood bubbling past her lips to trickle down her chin. Her hands remained rigid and locked in place. When she looked at Tommy's sun god, he met her gaze, his expression one of absolute horror.

"I think I broke it." Lucy told him through a mouthful of blood. She wanted to say _time_, but that seemed too severe.

Then she was falling, and Glorfindel was rushing forward to catch her before she hit the floor. Morwen was screaming, scrabbling away from Lucy on her hands and knees. The elf lords were all standing now, drawing their swords and shouting curses, and the Noldo prince was yelling orders to the guards. Lucy didn't care much at all.

She could feel her back burning, could smell her own flesh as it cooked and sizzled and boiled. Glorfindel was an odd combination of hardened armor and softened fabric as he caught her. Vaguely, Lucy noted that he was very warm and smelt like sunflowers.

From there, all was chaos.

* * *

**Author's Note**

And Glorfindel finally makes an appearance! I know there's been a lot of OCs up until now, but the statistical odds of Lucy running into one of the main characters almost immediately were so remote that it felt like a cop-out to have it happen any sooner.

Work's getting busy again, so I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to post the next chapter. The delay might be a couple of weeks, so I apologize to everyone in advance. Once again, a huge thank you to those of you who reviewed/favorited/followed! The fact that you're enjoying this is wonderful.

* * *

**References**

I avoid pulling quotes whenever possible, but in this case it was unavoidable. All lines for Gandalf are directly attributed to Peter Jackson's _The Fellowship of the Ring_. Referencing of lines will be kept to an absolute minimum in the future.

* * *

**Glossary**

Pada – _Walk_

Laurëfindil, daro ha – _Laurëfindil, stop it_

Nîn Aran – _My King_

Glorfindel, lín iest na pent – _Glorfindel, you wish to speak_

Lín istas nin – _You know me_


	7. A Crown of Thorns

Chapter VII: A Crown of Thorns

* * *

If Lucy had wanted to get the elves attention before, disappearing and then reappearing out of thin air covered in blood and burns was definitely the way to do it.

She hadn't wanted their attention, of course. Lucy had wanted Tommy, only Tommy, and for the malaise to finally end. It wasn't to be, it seemed. After the incident in the council chamber, the situation immediately got worse. Lucy wasn't truly conscious for the time that came directly after.

There was screaming, which came from Morwen, and the sound of people shouting; the heavy _thud_ of gilded doors being slammed time and time again. The world spun around her in a series of lights and kaleidoscope colors, and although Lucy's back had felt like it was on fire, it was now turning numb. The pain was leaving her along with her other senses to be replaced by a deep, consistent ache.

Lucy was wrapped in something warm and soft that felt like cotton, and when she was partially lifted off the ground the world churned, the ceiling above her spinning in a pinwheel as she lost her equilibrium. Everywhere, there was gold and the smell of sunflowers. It was a thick yellow haze that obscured her vision, and Lucy alternated between wondering if it was a sea of flowers or the sun itself, as it was warm and smooth against her skin, blocking out the exterior world.

Whatever was lifting her off the ground was very gentle, but Lucy could hear the furious pounding of what sounded like someone's heart beside her ear. It wasn't until a hand cupped her face, holding her head still as it lolled, that Lucy realized that she was being carried by someone, and that someone was Glorfindel.

The disappointment she felt upon discovering this fact was tangible.

Lucy was fully conscious for a moment or two, and in that moment where she managed to focus, it was to see Glorfindel's golden hair absolutely everywhere, his face tilted towards hers as he watched her. His expression was a mask of poorly forced calm as he murmured incessantly, and soon Lucy realized that his softly spoken words were a failed attempt to keep her conscious.

Every time she tried to fall asleep to numb the pain, the elf lord would shake her slightly, his tone becoming slightly more frantic. There were guards dashing past them, along with other elves fleeing the room.

"Hana maer." Glorfindel said, his voice wavering slightly as Lucy stumbled back into some semblance of awareness. He gave her a tremulous smile, holding her close as he cupped her face to support her head. "Dartha echui. Innas ci dartha echui nin?"

Lucy was having a hard time seeing properly, her vision blurred, but her face felt sticky with blood, and she could see that Glorfindel's hand was red with it. His thumb was rubbing soothing circles across her cheek. He was too close, his attention focused on her in an awful, intense sort of way, and Lucy didn't like it. She wanted to hate the elf, but she didn't have the energy for that at the moment. She didn't even have the energy to hate Maeglin. Distantly, Lucy found herself wondering where he was. Her back ached.

"Glorfindel." She managed to choke out. She had been planning on telling him to stop staring, to give her space, but her throat felt strange – like it was full of fluid – and soon Lucy lost her train of thought.

Like before, Glorfindel reacted to his name, giving her a watery smile in return. "Ah." He said. Lucy didn't know if this was a proclamation of sorts, a single word, or just an acknowledgment that he had heard her. There really was a lot of blood. Glorfindel was close enough that he had gotten a smudge of it on his cheek, and he seemed visibly distressed by her injuries. Lucy didn't understand why he would be. There were more pressing concerns to deal with, like having two balrogs on the bridge of Khazad-dûm instead of one.

"You forgot to kill a balrog." Lucy warned him through a mouth full of blood. It tasted bitter against her tongue, and faintly reminiscent of iron.

Glorfindel didn't have an answer for this, or at least none that Lucy could understand. He reacted poorly to the mention of balrogs however, standing abruptly and holding her close as he descended down a set of stairs, all but fleeing the room. His heart was pounding against her ear.

Lucy blacked out after that. It was a good three days before she managed to regain consciousness.

* * *

Later, Lucy learned that Glorfindel had to be dragged away by the King himself in order to make him leave the premises. Lucy would have reveled at this sort of attention from someone she knew, someone she **wanted** – Tommy especially – but from him, and less than a day after meeting, the discovery was more than a little bit disturbing.

Lucy wasn't returned to her cell. She wasn't even taken back to the dungeons proper. She was transferred to another cell, larger than the last and shaped like a bunker; one that was heavily fortified and located several floors beneath the prison itself, where the roar of the ravine was deafening.

Her cot was a raised stone platform in the center of it all, and around Lucy's ankle they attached a long silver chain and manacle. Her status as an "ambiguously held captive" was updated to full-on prisoner. This time, Lucy's imprisonment was under an army of healers and constant supervision, her door guarded by six gaolers at all times and the inside of her cell guarded by another seven. Her stunt in the Council Chamber was enough to convince the elves that she was an imminent threat of some sort or another, but her age and the nature of her disappearance seemed to imply that she wasn't to blame for it. As such, they tried to heal her.

The elves may have wanted to question her, and nothing more – Lucy knew she would have, after the incident – so their philanthropic nature was suspect. Even still, they stitched up her back as best they could, treating her burns with a salve and wrapping a good part of her body in bandages. Once or twice Lucy woke briefly to see Limbrethil and the Coroner and several other elves she didn't recognize fussing over her wounds, but for the most part she remained unconscious.

She was still too ill to eat, and now she was injured, but Lucy was already far too thin and so twice a day she was woken by Limbrethil, who spoon-fed her a type of gruel to keep her from starving. The elleth's slim hands would rest on her throat as she massaged the muscles, forcing her to swallow reflexively. This routine remained a constant for the next week or so, although it only felt like several hours in total for Lucy.

Then one day, the routine changed. Lucy woke up. Her first fully conscious memory after the incident was finding herself lying flat on her stomach in the middle of her bed. Glorfindel was sitting on the floor beside her.

Her back was wrapped in clean cotton bandages, her senses feeling thick from the medication. Glorfindel was seated next to her cot, his head tilted nearly sideways as he rested it on the covers to watch her silently. He was not a subtle elf in anything he did, and later, Lucy would learn that despite his skill in battle, the elf lord was very child-like in many ways: an odd juxtaposition for which he was somewhat infamous.

At the moment, Glorfindel's unruly blond hair was everywhere, spilling across the covers and over the floor in a wavy golden sheet. His eyes were wide and his gaze was disarming as he stared at her in a guileless manner. The elf lord was still dressed in armor, his sword resting nearby, but as Lucy stared at him in a sluggish stupor she was struck with the distinct impression that he wouldn't hurt a fly. There was no rot, and no deception. It was disquietingly unnatural.

_Too nice_, she though abstractly. _It's going to get him killed._

Glorfindel shifted against the covers when he caught her staring, never truly lifting his head off the bed. Lucy continued watching him, blinking slowly. Neither of them said anything to each other for a moment, the roar of the nearby ravine filling up the silence. One of Glorfindel's porcelain hands crept up onto the covers beside his head, his milk-white fingers fiddling with the fabric by his face. It seemed to be a nervous gesture he did when thinking.

"Suilad." He said eventually, a bit hesitantly, as if he wasn't sure if it was the right thing to say. His voice was clear and musical and very expressive. Lucy didn't say anything back to him other than a slurred "hello" in return. She was too tired. After that, she fell asleep.

When she woke up next, it was to find the King himself sitting next to her on a chair. Morwen was sitting beside him. Lucy was still lying flat on her stomach, covered by blankets and bandages, but Glorfindel was nowhere to be seen.

The King of Gondolin was subdued that day. Thoughtful looking, and very severe. His ivory robes had been replaced by ones of navy blue and russet red, the collar tall and the sleeves of the outer robe voluminous and flowing. Turgon was a very large elf up close, and his black hair was perfectly straight, falling in a glossy sheet down his front as he bowed his head in thought. Although the King was sitting by Lucy's cot he still kept his distance, staying out of arm's reach of the bed. Standing on either side of the Noldo prince was a golden-helmed guard, their gauntleted hands resting tensely on the pommels of their swords as if to draw them.

Turgon clasped his elegant hands together. In the dim light, his skin seemed to be glowing.

Beside the King, Morwen was sitting with one leg crossed atop the other, her head held in her left hand as she balanced her elbow atop her knee. Her other arm was wrapped tight around her middle as if to contain a stomach-ache. She was dressed in purple again, the same purple outfit she had worn when she first arrived. Her navy veil was hanging heavy around her face, which looked slightly off-color from lack of sleep and worry.

Lucy felt a flash of fear mixed with revulsion as she thought of the wraith-like creature with Morwen's face, but it quickly faded. When the King realized Lucy was awake and staring at him, he began to speak. Morwen translated for him with a worn-out sort of trepidation that made it clear she would have preferred to be anywhere else but there.

"The King, he says he hopes you are feeling better, and wishes to ask how you feel."

Lucy blinked sluggishly in reply, wondering if the comment had been made in jest, but when Turgon met her gaze and didn't look away, she realized he wasn't joking.

"I've been better." She slurred eventually, her voice hoarse and barely above a whisper. Morwen continued talking, but the King didn't speak.

"After they took you away, the King, he made me translate what it was you said to Lord Glorfindel, and he was very upset. The elf lords of the city were very upset, and all was chaos. There is much concern in Gondolin, as you disappeared and returned to us damaged, making your words seem true."

Again Lucy was hit with a wave of fear, but this one was more pervasive, tied to memories of flames and men in black robes with burning orange eyes. She shivered beneath her blankets, willing her sense of wrongness to dissipate. She was here, back in Gondolin, far away from the balrog-infested bridge and the blackened throne room. Lucy tried to tell herself that she was safe, but the burns along her back and the bandages covering her limbs said otherwise.

The elf king spoke then, clasping his hands in front of him. He had very elegant hands, the fingers long and the wrist bones exquisitely crafted to give the appearance of refinement and strength. Morwen began rubbing at her own wrists, alternating between that and picking at her nails.

"The King, he wishes to know – and he wants you to be truthful when you answer – if you were taken away from the council chamber to be punished, for speaking the truth."

Lucy didn't hate the King, at least not yet. She could see his insides, and while Turgon seemed to be masking a deep-seated stubbornness, he was otherwise appeared very bland. The elf was akin to an ice sheet; slow moving and slow to change, but prone to sudden streaks of activity when his immutable calm was disturbed. Tommy had mentioned nothing about a King named Turgon, however, so Lucy had no reason to distrust him. He was just another elf, and his question – as far as Lucy was concerned – was utterly banal and harmless. She responded as best she could.

"I don't work for Sauron." She whispered hoarsely. When Morwen translated this to the Noldo prince, he drew in a deep breath through his nose and looked at Lucy with eyes that were heavy with disappointment. It was clear from his expression that he did not believe her, or thought she was being manipulated and was too young to tell the difference. Lucy didn't blame him for his lack of confidence, although she was deeply annoyed by it. It was only natural that the King was suspicious, but the fact that he thought Lucy was unable to think for herself was almost insulting. Lucy was nothing if not brutally honest.

"I'm **not**." She insisted, her fingers curling weakly against the cover in irritation. "I just told Glorfindel how he was going to die. Then I went to the future. There were two balrogs there. Two of them, and there should have been one." The King said something in a decidedly harsh manner. Morwen translated.

"You know Glorfindel." It was a statement.

Lucy – who was still too sluggish with sleep to realize there was something off about the King's wording – simply nodded her head against the cover, letting out a parched-sounding "Yes."

"You know what happens to the Lord Glorfindel? How he dies?"

Again, Lucy nodded _yes_, then added "He might not die the same way now, since I told him."

"And you know the fate of this city?"

"Yes." Said Lucy. Her throat hurt from talking, like the inside of it had been charred from the hot influx of air. "I was telling you what happened when I disappeared. You wouldn't listen to me before."

The King did not sigh when this was translated, but one of his elegant hands did grip his navy-clad knee, the other rising to his face as he pinched the bridge of his nose. He closed his large gray eyes, speaking slowly and with a weary sort of finality.

"The King, he apologizes for putting you in the dungeon when you are still healing." Morwen began. "But you carry dangerous knowledge that you cannot control, and as such you have placed him in quite a predicament. They have been talking, he and the Lords of Gondolin. Much talking, and much arguing, yes? They have decided that you **do** aid the enemy, but you do not do so willingly. It is with great shame that they see how the enemy has hurt a child, yet, they cannot let you go."

"This city –" And here Morwen paused in her diatribe, swallowing heavily as she listened to the King. The woman suddenly looked ill. "This city, no one – no one must leave it, as it is a hidden city, but you especially cannot depart. You are a servant of the enemy, and even if you weren't, you are a child with no one to care for you. They do not abandon children as such. It is not in their nature. Children are precious, and there are so very few. "

"So I'm a prisoner." Lucy said mechanically, by way of confirmation. She really didn't care that much at the moment. Morwen relayed this to the King, and he answered easily, his brow dipping down into a frown.

"Since you are an orphan, you are now a Ward of the King, yes? It is what happens to them before they are adopted. It is the way in Gondolin. The King, he does not wish to keep you here in the dungeons, but he has no other choice. These orphans, they are usually adopted very quickly, yes? Very, very quickly, as all elves love children - even Noldor, he bade me tell you - but they cannot put you in an orphanage as it is too dangerous for the other children. The King wishes to know what is written in your books and your scrolls, but he does not want to trigger another event such as the one that happened before. He apologizes, but for now you must be kept here where it is safe, until they decide what will be done with you."

Here the Noldo prince paused, and Morwen paused with him. When the woman spoke again, her tone was tired and unenthusiastic, as if she had been asked this question before.

"The King wishes to know if you would like to speak with Glorfindel."

Lucy was too out of it to put two and two together. The question confused her. "Why would I want to speak with **him**?"

Morwen shrugged, and did not translate.

"I do not know. I believe he wishes to speak with you, yes?"

Lucy did not like this prospect and frowned heavily, her thin fingers curling even more tightly against the covers. She wanted nothing to do with Tommy's sun god. She wished he didn't exist.

"I don't want to speak to him." She slurred. "I'm tired."

And she was tired, but in hindsight it was obvious that Morwen misinterpreted her words. She translated them to the King, who had been waiting patiently. As she explained Lucy's predicament he nodded in understanding and let out a sigh, clasping his hands in front of him.

"The King says he and the other lords will return to speak to you once you are feeling better. He will tell Glorfindel that he must visit another day." Morwen declared. "When they return, they will discuss what to do."

"I thought we already **did** that." Lucy said in response, feeling churlish, but most of her words were slurred and spoken too softly, so the other woman ignored them. The King stood, turning along with his guards to exit the room. One of the gaolers remained behind, as Morwen didn't follow him.

When the King was gone, Morwen hunched in on herself, rubbing at the wrist of her left hand. She looked upset, and Lucy wondered if she was the cause.

"Are you mad at me?" Lucy asked. Morwen didn't look up. "Yes." The woman bit out. Lucy hadn't expected her to be honest, and when she was it left her blinking in shock.

"Really?" She said in surprise. When Morwen looked up at her, the woman's eyes were shiny with unshed tears. She gestured helplessly with her hand around the room as she spoke, her tone bitter.

"I had a life, yes?" She said. Her voice wavered. "Before this, I had a life and I had my people and I was happy far away from here. But these Noldor, they come and they threaten. The come and they colonize, they steal the best land and they look down on Sindar and they tell everyone else that their ways are wrong, but they are not from here. High elves, they call themselves! As if there is anything noble about them." Morwen let out a desperate laugh, and it sounded somewhat hysterical.

"These Noldor, they never see us before. They are not so used to humans. But they come to **my** land, **my **people, and say _look, a child. We have a small child, and she is very sick and we cannot understand_. And when my people say _no_ because it is too dangerous to travel, they say I must go with them, or they will take me by force. They take everything by force, these Noldor, with their swords and their oaths and their pride. And so I come, hoping to help, but there is no child here. There is a woman-child, and she listens to nothing I say and makes things worse. Now, I cannot go back. I can never go back, because the Noldor are greedy and they wish to keep you. They wish to keep me. They wish to keep Gondolin secret, and we are trapped in this city and I know no one. How would you feel, if you were taken?"

If Lucy had been a kinder person, she would had felt camaraderie with Morwen, and maybe even empathy for the woman's plight. But Lucy wasn't, and as it stood she was feeling ill and aching and peevish, which made her lack of empathy worse. All Lucy could think about was that she **did** know how it felt, because she had been lost and captured too.

"But I do know." Lucy argued. Morwen wasn't listening. The woman sniffled slightly, rubbing at her eyes with a delicate gesture of the hand. A moment later she spoke, standing in a swirl of skirts. She angled her head away from Lucy, as if afraid she would see her crying.

"I am sorry." She said thickly. "I am tired. Very, very tired, and it is shameful. You will forgive me if I must leave. I will return soon." And then she left. Lucy didn't try to stop her.

In the cell, there was nothing but Lucy and the guards and the roar of the ravine, muffled by the mountain of blankets that Limbrethil had piled around her. Her skin felt uncomfortably raw and tight across her back. Lucy – already drugged and hazy with pain – tried to ignore the sensation, just as she had ignored Morwen's outburst.

Eventually, she closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

* * *

After the impromptu meeting, Lucy dreamed.

She didn't dream often. Lucy was not a creative person by nature, and her nights were long and full of nothingness; of a blackness that persisted from the time she closed her eyes to the time when she finally jolted awake.

When Lucy did dream, it was always in monochrome. Often it was of mundane things, like sitting in a rickety wooden chair in the middle of an empty room, or watching a clock tick down the seconds upon a paint-chipped wall as she waited for a particular event that she could never remember afterwards. Sometimes, she would be standing on a cliff buff next to a rusted swing set, watching a rubber seat creak back and forth. Always, she was alone. Isolation was a common theme.

This dream was different and seemed very real, but Lucy knew it was a dream because Tommy was there, and Tommy had been dead for quite some time now. Everything was stained in vivid color, too bright and over-saturated. Lucy was dressed in her old school uniform, complete with bloodstains and bruising.

She was in a garden of sorts: garden filled with giant mushrooms and eight-foot tall flowers that made Lucy think she'd been shrunken down to the size of a mouse. She was sitting at a marble table that was covered with an ivory tablecloth, and there were several other people sitting with her. Tommy was seated next to Lucy, dressed in Lucy's white nightgown that the elves had given her. There was blood matting her hair, and one side of her skull was completely caved in, just like it had been on the mountain.

"Tea?" Tommy asked her with a voice that didn't sound like hers, holding out a delicate tea pot the color of buttercups with tiny red roses painted along the center. Tommy's nails were painted yellow too. As she leaned forward to pour Lucy a cup, there was a soft splattering sound, and Lucy watched as a small chunk of Tommy's brains dribbled out onto the pristine white tablecloth. It was a startling shade of pink – the same color it had been when it had coated Lucy's hands.

"Tommy," Said Lucy. "Tommy, you got brains on the table."

"Oh, don't worry about that." Said Tommy with a benign chirp, sounding very much alive when she was supposed to be dead. "Glorfindel will clean it up." The girl looked across the table, and Lucy turned to see the see the golden-haired elf lord sitting beside them. "Won't you, darling? You like fixing things." Tommy said. She turned to Lucy, smiling gently. "He always cleans things up. He likes the mess."

Glorfindel was dressed all in ivory and wearing what looked like a crown made of thorns. There were bugs in his crown; giant black beetles that were impaled upon the spikes, and they were writhing. The elf's skin was pallid, and he looked decidedly ill. Glorfindel was picking at the tablecloth in distress, and there was sharp looking knife clutched tight in his white-knuckled right hand. Lucy didn't know why he was there, but she resented him for it.

When Tommy handed Lucy her teacup, she didn't drink from it, choosing instead to glare at the elf lord as she gripped the arm rests of her chair. "You shouldn't hate him, you know." Tommy said in a very un-Tommy-like manner. "It wasn't his fault. He's a darling."

Glorfindel looked up at this, fiddling with the tablecloth in the same way that he had fiddled with Lucy's bed sheet. His expression was haunted.

"I didn't know." He said in English, and there was an edge of hysteria to his voice. "I didn't – no one told me. You weren't supposed to tell me!"

"Hush, Darling." Said Tommy, leaning over to pour him a cup of tea and getting more brains on the table in the process. "Have something to drink. It will calm your nerves."

"He's not your Darling." Lucy hissed, unable to take it anymore. She dug her fingers into the armrests so hard her nails cracked and bled. "I'm your darling. Your Lucy Darling. I told you. I **told** you."

"Oh, Lucy." Said Tommy sadly, patting her thin hand with her dead one. Her flesh was a sickly white, tinged with blue and rot. "You were always so selfish."

There was a clatter across the table. Both girls turned to see Glorfindel clawing at the crown on his head, trying to get it off. It wasn't budging, and the more he tugged at it, the more his beautiful hands bled, ripped apart by the thorns. It was only then that Lucy realized the crown was nailed to his skull. The elf was hyperventilating. Lucy could almost taste his panic.

"Glorfindel, Darling." Said Tommy in her un-Tommy-like manner, setting down the teapot and taking a dainty sip of her tea like she was a boarding school matron. The jagged edge of her skull glistened red in the light. "You need to calm down. Remember what I told you? It isn't real."

"I'm choking." He sobbed as he clawed at his head to no avail, dropping his knife to tug at the crown with both his hands. "I'm choking. I didn't know. Make it stop." Vaguely, Lucy decided he sounded strange when he spoke in English. He didn't have an accent. _But then_, she supposed, _this is a dream._

"That's your head, Darling. Not your throat." Said Tommy helpfully, not being helpful at all when she went back to sipping at her tea. "Remember to breathe."

"You didn't tell him anything." Lucy said suddenly, vehemently. Tommy was ignoring her again, and Lucy hated being ignored. "**I** did. You never met him. You died before we got here."

Tommy looked up and through her. Her eyes were dull.

"You're right." She said slowly, her teacup stilled in her hand. Her tone was monotonous. In the background, Lucy could still hear Glorfindel's panicked muttering. "This was my world. My place, and you stole it from me. You're the one who's supposed to be dead."

"No I didn't!" Lucy countered, angry and upset and wishing she was awake, because this wasn't fun at all and she wanted to make Tommy be quiet. She loved her and she hated her and she hated that she couldn't have her, and the one that did have Tommy's affections was currently clawing at his head as he crumbled to pieces under an impromptu breakdown.

"Tommy wouldn't say that." Lucy told her. "Tommy had me. Only me. She needed **me**. You aren't Tommy."

"That was your fault." Said the Not-Tommy. Lucy felt cheated, and her chest hurt. "It was your fault, and you're greedy. You poison things. You poison people. You make them think there's only you."

"I love you." Lucy said on a warble, trying to hold back her sobs. Even though it was a dream, it was the first time she'd been able to see Tommy in over a month, and Tommy still didn't want her. It wasn't fair. "I love you. I told you I loved you so many times, and you ignored me."

"Lucy," Said Glorfindel suddenly, his voice cracking as he wrapped his hands around his spiny crown, squishing beetles beneath his bleeding palms. "Lucy, it hurts. Make it stop."

"Shut up." Lucy snapped. "Shut up. I don't want to see you."

And then suddenly it wasn't Tommy sitting across from her, but Maeglin.

Maeglin, with all his beautiful black clothes and beautiful black hair and big black doe eyes that were dead and hard as stones. He held Tommy's teacup in his hands, never drinking from it, looking at and through her. His voice was soft and distant.

"She never loved me either." He said.

Glorfindel scrabbled with his bloody hands across the table to grab his knife, begging Lucy for forgiveness and pleading for oblivion. His face was wet with tears. "You weren't supposed to tell me." He sobbed as he finally managed to grab the blade. "I can't do it. I can't. It hurts. Where did you go?"

"You should stop him." Maeglin warned.

"Why don't you?" Lucy countered. The dark elf shrugged. As he did so, Glorfindel slashed the knife sideways across his neck, cutting his own throat so quickly all Lucy could do was twitch in surprise as a spray of his blood splattered across her face. He collapsed face first onto the table.

"I hate him too." Was Maeglin's response. Then Lucy woke up, flexing her hands and digging her fingers into the nondescript covers. She blinked once, and let out a convulsive shudder.

She was alone in her bed, the roar of ravine echoing all around her. The dream had seemed so real, but she knew it wasn't. Glorfindel wasn't there, and neither was Tommy. It wasn't fair.

In that moment, all Lucy could feel was bitterness.

* * *

**Author's Note**

I'm alive? I'm alive. So much work. I almost forgot to post this. Not much to say this time around, except that things are veering off-course again. I usually figure out major plot points ahead of time, then let the actions of the characters dictate the story from there, but it tends to make things a bit unpredictable.

Thank you to those who reviewed/favorited/followed, and my apologies to all for taking so long to respond to your reviews! I wrote two chapters in my absence, so Chapter 8 should be up within the next couple days. I don't like making you guys wait for updates.

* * *

**Glossary**

Hana maer – _Its alright/good_

Dartha echui. Innas ci dartha echui nin – _Stay awake. Will you stay awake for me_

Suilad – _Hello/greetings_


	8. Truce

Chapter VIII: Truce

* * *

Lucy was determined to get out of the dungeons.

She was determined to do this because one day she woke up, and even though she was still ill and injured and far too thin, she was more awake and aware than she had been in weeks, and in that moment Lucy was angry.

She was angry with Tommy, for up and dying when she needed her the most. She was angry with Limbrethil, for treating her like a baby. She was angry with Morwen, and she was angry with Maeglin and she was angry with the King, and Lucy was especially angry at Glorfindel, as Tommy's obsession with him was where this whole damn thing had started.

Lucy hated Middle Earth, or what little she had seen of it. She hated Gondolin, with its stupid white walls and its stupid white towers and its mildewing dungeons, where the air was too thick for her to breathe properly and everything smelt like moss and lichen. Most of all, Lucy hated herself. She wasn't prone to hating herself, but in that moment she definitely did, as she had been foolish enough to think the malaise would end if she simply jumped off a seven-story building.

She had known. She had always known, even before they jumped, that it wouldn't have worked: not in the way that Lucy had wanted it. She had known that they had needed a taller tower from which to jump, and she had said **nothing**.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" She had asked, but in hindsight Lucy knew she had been so, so stupid for asking in _that_ way, because of course Tommy had misunderstood her intentions. Of course she had thought Lucy's question meant "Do you want to go to Middle Earth," instead of "Do you want to find a bigger building?"

It was that awful shortcoming of hers. Her absolute inability to say the right things when they truly mattered the most. And now Lucy was stuck here, and Tommy wasn't. Lucy didn't understand anything about Middle Earth, and the longer she was there, the more it grated on her: the feeling that she was and remained an intruder.

Sitting up on her stone bed, swathed in blankets from head to toe, Lucy gritted her teeth and extended her left arm, drawing back her over-sized sleeve to examine the thick scar tissue that tracked its way up the underside of her limb. She ran her hand along the whitened skin in contemplative silence. When Lucy had taken the knife to her arm, it had been a mess; a mess in the familial sense, because she didn't remember the event itself, but her mother had been the one to find her.

Lucy had been committed for three weeks to the nearest hospital after the incident. They had stitched her up, then unceremoniously sent her to the children's ward of the nearby psychiatric division. There, she'd been under constant supervision while self-important psychiatrists had diagnosed her with a whole host of problems, urging Lucy in a gentle, patronizing tone to "work through her suicidal ideation."

Lucy didn't remember picking up the knife, or carving the lines into her limbs, but she **did** remember that she hadn't been suicidal. The moment before she'd taken a knife to her arms, she had been struck with the notion that she was not herself, and Lucy had been consumed with the urge to peel back her skin to see the insides.

She wasn't really suicidal now, either, but Lucy was tired and angry and determined to leave this place. If she couldn't escape the dungeon through conventional means, she was more than willing to open a vein and let herself bleed out. Lucy took another look at the underside of her arm, then cast a surreptitious glance towards the door, biting her bottom lip.

_Decisions, decisions._

If the guards in her cell took note of her gaze, they hid their interest, but Lucy could feel a sense of disquiet in the air; an almost tangible miasma of tightness that coiled itself beneath her breastbone.

Something was very wrong and had been for several weeks, and the more Lucy focused on the feeling, the more her own apprehension grew. It wasn't the bone-chilling terror she had experienced on the bridge of Khazad-dûm when she had seen the balrogs, or the sudden shock she felt when she had witnessed Morwen's face melt into a wraith's. It was a deeper, more pervasive, slow-building fear, and it was inextricably linked to her understanding that something had changed since the incident in the council chamber, and not for the better.

Before, the elves had treated Lucy with caution and more than a little distrust, but there had been a laissez faire attitude in their actions towards her; the belief that time was on their side, so there was no need to rush. The Noldor had been tense and on-edge, but their nervousness had been directed towards the distant but ever-present war, and so Lucy hadn't felt the brunt of it. Now they were focused on her in a way that was downright unbearable, but the sense of wrongness came from more than just that. Lucy couldn't quite put her finger on it, but it was if something in the air had changed. As if the fabric of the world around her had shattered and then remade itself when she broke some unspoken timeline.

All it would take was the slightest push to send everything spiraling into oblivion. The elves seemed to realize this too. Gondolin was a powder keg, and Lucy was too close to the blast radius. She was content with dying, but not for them. When Lucy died, it would be on her own terms, and not before. She had to get out.

Hunching slightly in a huddled pool beneath her covers, Lucy lowered her sleeve and drew out her foot, examining the silver chain that was wrapped around her ankle.

The manacle was light, all things considered. Attached to the cuff was a thin silver chain small enough to fit into Lucy's palm, running across the covers of her bed and down onto the floor. The elves had made sure the manacle was not too tight so it wouldn't dig into her skin, but the purpose of the device was clear. She was a prisoner, and she wasn't leaving.

Chafing against the tight weave of her bandages and the raw, new-skin feeling along her back, Lucy leaned forward, tugging on the chain to pull it up and see where it ended. The air wasn't as harsh on her lungs as it had been before, and although she still couldn't run or do anything strenuous, basic movement no longer bothered her. She was able to pull up the chain without difficulty.

When the chain grew taut after seven feet of length and she still couldn't see the end, Lucy surmised that the chain was linked to the floor somewhere close to the base of her bed. She briefly looked up at the nearest guard, who was standing in the corner of her cell by the door, his face blank and mostly hidden behind his helmet. Lucy tugged on her chain experimentally, trying to see if the links were malleable, but even if she hadn't been weak from prolonged illness, they wouldn't have broken. The device was thin, but absurdly strong. Lucy coughed, sniffling slightly as she rubbed at her nose. The persistent, low-grade chill had never left her, and she was beginning to wonder if it ever would.

Swaying slightly from exhaustion, shivering beneath the blankets with the chain between her hands, Lucy looked back at the guard, who didn't move at all under her scrutiny. A moment later, she twitched her foot, picking up her chain and rattling it in his direction.

"Can you unchain me?" She asked the gaurd blank, because there was no use at her playing with any sort of subterfuge. The guard didn't answer, and the others didn't acknowledge her, which wasn't surprising. Lucy spoke louder this time, undeterred and undaunted.

"I have to go to the bathroom." She declared. She didn't, but this statement didn't get a rise out of them either. Lucy didn't care.

Over the next several hours, and then days, she tried all sorts of petty tricks to get the guards to start talking; throwing off her blankets to force them to step closer so as to return them, kicking up a fuss and pretending to suffer from persistent nightmares to see if they would call for someone higher-ranking official to deal with her. They never did. In all but the most extreme of circumstances, the guards ignored her, and not once did they signal for backup.

A few days later, Lucy gave up on using the guards in her haphazard escape plan. None of them had the keys, anyway. There were others, though. Other elves who were more receptive to her plight.

Lucy set her sights on someone higher.

* * *

The first person Lucy tried to convince to help her escape was Limbrethil.

The elleth had been in to see her every day, but for the most part Lucy had been asleep or too out of it to acknowledge that the slender elf was there. When she had been awake, it was to talk to the King or cajole the guards. As such, when Lucy confronted Limbrethil three weeks after the Council incident, it was the first time in a long while that that the two of them had met face to face, with both parties awake and conscious.

Lucy was not subtle about her intentions.

"I want to leave." She told the black-eyed elleth as soon as she entered the heavily fortified cell, accompanied on either side by two of Maeglin's guards. Limbrethil looked up as Lucy spoke, smiling happily when she saw Lucy awake and sitting on the edge of her stone bed, swinging her feet a foot off the ground. Even still, there was something forced about the gesture.

The elleth look harried that morning, her hair hastily drawn back into a messy braid that began at the base of her neck. Her dress was a nondescript gray, and there was a odd sort of pallor about her face; a long, deep-seated exhaustion sitting heavy upon her slender shoulders that was reminiscent of the elf's attitude when Lucy first met her. The guards seemed to be on edge too, further adding to Lucy's sense of wrongness. Morwen wasn't with her. This was a problem, but Lucy's determination remained the same.

"Limbrethil, I feel better." She said, swinging her legs and picking at her bandages as the elleth came to stand in front of her. Lucy found the elves reacted more positively when she said their names, so she did it as often as possible. She held out her arm, pointing to the door. "Tell them to let me out."

As expected, Limbrethil reacted positively to her name, leaning down to plant a quick kiss in greeting against the side of Lucy's temple. She smoothed aside Lucy's hair with her hand. The elleth liked touching Lucy's hair, Lucy had come to discover. The Noldor in general seemed more physically affectionate than the Sindar, prone to clapping each other on the back in casual greeting or squeezing shoulders in camaraderie when they thought that Lucy wasn't looking.

The Sindar were a prickly lot, and didn't like strangers near them, or at least that's what Lucy could gauge from what she had seen. The only elf she knew that was Sinda for sure was Anaduilin.

Limbrethil had a large pack akin to a messenger bag slung over her shoulder. After speaking her usual greetings – which Lucy couldn't understand, save that they **were** greetings – the elf put the bag down on bed and began checking Lucy's bandages, _tching_ her tongue and speaking admonishments as she did so.

Lucy let the elleth fuss over her as she pleased, leaning sideways to rifle shamelessly through Limbrethil's pack. There wasn't much in the way of contents that interested her. Rolls of bandages and gauze, that strange green goo that they put on her wounds that smelt faintly of rosewater, and bottles of medicinal potions that Lucy just knew would taste absolutely awful. She spied a clean nightgown for her to wear, which Lucy was happy for, and another pair of baby booties, for which she was not. There was also Lucy's copper-headed doll, tucked into the corner – the one that Limbrethil had tried and failed to get Lucy interested in – but she saw no key.

Without hesitation, Lucy reached over and began patting down Limbrethil's sides, digging her little fingers into the dress pocket near the elf's hips as she went looking for a key chain.

Limbrethil let out a short, undignified squeak of surprise when Lucy did so, then sighed in exasperation when it became clear what she was looking for. She hummed in disapproval, forcing Lucy's hands back to her lap.

"Baw." she said sternly, forcing Lucy to sit still. "Havant en. Na maer."

Limbrethil went back to checking her bandages. The minute she did so, Lucy began squirming again, refusing to sit still as she turned back to Limbrethil's pack to dig through the contents with determination.

"Where's your key?" Lucy asked her as she rooted though the pockets of the soft messenger bag, her fingernails coming back embedded with tiny balls of lint. Her nails were far too long now, and they would have to be trimmed soon or risk breaking.

"Havant en." Was Limbrethil's response as she once again forced Lucy back into a position where she could easily check her bandages.

Lucy was struck with a momentary inspiration, and she pulled out the doll, grasping its middle as she shoved it upwards towards Limbrethil's lowered face. Limbrethil liked babies. All elves liked babies, Morwen had told her. They adored children. Limbrethil was happier when she played the child, and more complacent.

At that moment, Lucy was willing to act as the baby for years if it would get her what she wanted.

"What's the doll's name?" She asked, making sure to give Limbrethil the most innocent expression she could manage. The elleth seemed pleased that she was finally taking interest in the toy and kissed the crown of her head as a reward, but that was it. She seemed harried and distracted, her attention elsewhere, and the elleth kept shooting nervous, sideways glances at the guards.

Lucy didn't want kisses. Lucy wanted the key. She held open her arms to Limbrethil, as if asking to be picked up.

"I want to go for a walk." She demanded, swinging her feet in a petulant manner. The bed was far too big for her. "Take me for a walk. The doll, too."

On most people, this would have worked.

Lucy was not naturally precocious, as the minute she opened her mouth to say something damning the illusion was usually shattered, but she could look exceptionally delicate when she wanted to: fragile, and in need of taking care of. It made certain types of individuals fawn over her. Limbrethil was not one of them. She may have loved children, and she may have babied Lucy as a result, but she had been around her for long enough to know that Lucy was up to no good. She sent her a stern glance as a result.

"Baw_._" she said, hands on her hips. Lucy had been around the elves long enough now to know that the word meant _no_.

"_Yes_." Lucy said in elvish, holding out her arms and pouting mightily. It was another basic word she had picked up, and she planned to use it. "Lucy walk." She demanded in English.

Limbrethil looked simultaneously thrilled and disappointed that Lucy was speaking elvish, but using it for unscrupulous gains. She shook her head, unmoved by Lucy's innocent pout and limpid eyes.

"Baw_._" She repeated. And that was the end of that. Lucy went out of her way to be as difficult as possible for the rest of the meeting.

* * *

The trick worked on Anaduilin, surprisingly enough. Out of all the elves she had met so far, barring Maeglin, Lucy would have never of guessed it.

She hadn't seen the fine-boned, pale-haired ellon in some time, and when he arrived Lucy wasn't expecting him. He no longer came to her cell every day to make her read Tommy's books, and if he had come to see her after the incident in the Council Chamber, it had definitely been while Lucy was unconscious.

The day before, Limbrethil had refused to be swayed by Lucy's demands. After she had finished checking her bandages and feeding her biscuits, two guards had brought in a small wooden tub filled with water, before all of them had left the room for a paltry ten minutes while Limbrethil had quickly given Lucy a bath. She had redressed her wounds and changed her clothes, and after getting sufficiently weepy over Lucy's scars, the elleth had tucked her back into bed. She hadn't been seen since.

It was just Anaduilin and two of his guards today, accompanied on his left by Morwen. The woman was dressed in a pale lavender gown done up in an elvish style that contrasted sharply with her sun-browned skin. Lucy wasn't ashamed to admit that she was surprised to see her.

She hadn't thought that Morwen would return so quickly after her outburst, during which she had grown frustrated with Lucy and abruptly left. Even still, Lucy was happy she did, although _pleased_ might have been the more accurate term. Enough time had passed that she was no longer afraid of Morwen's face melting, but the truth of the matter was that if there hadn't been the incident in the Council Chamber, Lucy would have thought she'd imagined it entirely. Having Morwen there to translate for her made her plan of escape that much easier.

Anaduilin looked dour and withdrawn as ever, although the outside weather must have been warmer than the last time Lucy was above ground, as the clothes he was wearing were not as thick and voluminous. Most times the only skin that was showing were his hands and face, as both his collar and sleeve cuffs were usually long. Today the tunic he was wearing was thin, the collar wide and dragging in a straight line across his collarbones. Lucy could actually see his neck: an elegant, slender neck that was a delicate as the rest of him. His skin was so pale and silvery that it was blending in to the wisps of his hair.

"How are you, Sweetness?" Morwen asked somewhat nervously, breaking the silence first. She picked up the side of her lavender skirt to keep herself from tripping over the hem, walking into the room. As she did so she ducked her head, avoiding Lucy's gaze. She seemed determined to pretend that the argument between them had never happened, and Lucy was perfectly content to let her do so.

"Fine." She told Morwen. "I can breathe better." She turned to look at Anaduilin, who had been watching them with a blank expression as he slowly meandered into the center of the room. Unceremoniously, she held out her arms to him as she had done to Limbrethil, playing the baby as she absently swung her feet back and forth over the side of the bed.

"I want to go for a walk." She told him. Lucy didn't know if he had the key yet, but he was head of the prisons, so it made sense that he might.

When Lucy said this, Morwen finally looked at her, her steps stuttering briefly as she took in Lucy's body language and blatant manipulation. Her expression briefly flickered into a mask of disapproval before going blank. She spoke to Anaduilin, translating what Lucy had said, and after listening attentively and blinking once, the ellon turned and said something to one of the accompanying guards, who nodded briefly and stepped out of the room. Anaduilin then turned back and came forward, reaching into his pocket to withdraw a small silver key chain.

Lucy's eyes went wide. She had been so sure he wouldn't do it she let her shock get the best of her, speaking before she could think.

"Keys. You have the keys." Lucy said, dropping her hands into her lap before raising them again. "I want the keys."

"Lucy, do not ruin it." Morwen warned. Lucy screwed her lips into a frown, but stayed silent, squirming slightly in her seat as Anaduilin approached.

The silver-haired ellon knelt in front of her and lifted her chained foot. His hand cupped the entirety of her heel as he readjusted the manacle to a better height, inserting the key and unlocking the cuff with a soft _click_. Anaduilin's fingers were cool against her skin as he removed the manacle, but the bottom of Lucy's foot was ticklish. She twitched at his touch, leaning forward to watch him as she wriggled her tiny toes against his palm.

It was a disconcerting sensation to have him holding her foot, because even though the warden was smaller than the other elves he was still much bigger than Lucy. As Anaduilin leaned forward to free her ankle, his braid of silver hair fell forward. Lucy remembered how soft it was, and had to consciously remind herself not to reach over and touch it. Her internal voice wasn't very strong, however.

"Sweetness, no touching." Morwen reminded her sharply, and it was only then that Lucy realized that she'd been reaching out subconsciously.

She fisted her hands in her lap, leaning back as Anaduilin lowered her foot, standing to his full height as he re-pocketed the key. Lucy eyed the gesture with naked hunger, but if Anaduilin noticed he made no indication of it. His expression was characteristically blank, but there was no annoyed clenching of his jaw, and he wasn't biting the inside of his cheek. Lucy took this to mean that he was in a good mood. It was a positive sign.

"Am I allowed to go for a walk, now?" She asked. Morwen shrugged, scratching absently with her polished fingernails at a wisp of her dark hair that had trickled across her collarbone. "I am not sure." She said, then translated this question to the warden.

Anaduilin spoke in return as he leaned forward, sliding his hands beneath Lucy's armpits to lift her up off the bed. Lucy gripped his forearms to steady herself as he righted her onto the floor, leaning into his hands for support as she stood.

"Anaduilin, he says the King has not disapproved you moving about the dungeons, so long as you are accompanied, yes?" Morwen informed her. "The lords of this city, they are truthful when they say they wish your health to improve. It is only that you are very dangerous. Anaduilin, he bade me to tell you that are allowed to walk, so long as it's with him, and only down the hallway. You must behave, or you will not be let out again. You must stay close, also, where he can reach you. No wandering."

Lucy did not particularly like this rule, but she didn't hate it either. She was feeling childish, however, and very antsy. A bored Lucy was a Lucy that was prone to misbehaving.

"Can I hold his hand?" She asked, gripping the fabric of Anaduilin's sleeve as she craned her neck to look at his face. The warden was looking elsewhere.

"Lucy –" Morwen sighed, clearly exasperated.

"Can I?" She persisted.

Morwen translated this with visible reluctance. As she did so, Anaduilin's hands tightened ever so slightly around Lucy, and he bit the inside of his cheek. _Ah, _she thought. _There it is_. He was annoyed again.

Lucy did not get to hold Anaduilin's hand when they left the room. She did get to stay near him, though. The ellon had been serious when he'd said she needed to stay within arm's reach.

The silver-haired Sinda kept one hand on Lucy's back as they walked, partially to make sure Lucy didn't fall flat on her face but mostly to ensure she didn't attempt an untimely escape down the hallway. Lucy was glad to be up and walking, and although the roar of the ravine was even more deafening in the corridor, the change of scenery from the four corners of her cell was preferable. Lucy wasn't out of the dungeons yet, but for the moment she was content to simply meander along the hallway on unsteady legs, glancing sideways at the exits as they passed to try and plot her haphazard escape.

There weren't that many exits within the dungeon, and those that Lucy did see were too heavily guarded. There were too many soldiers down here, both of Maeglin's black-clad gaolers and the golden-helmed royal guards. Briefly, Lucy contemplated throwing herself into the ravine if she could find a nearby opening, but she wasn't the greatest swimmer and she didn't know where the waterway led to. More and more, it was looking like she would need to rely on someone else to get her out of the dungeons. From what Tommy had told her before, the elves moved too quickly for Lucy to outrun them should she try to escape through one of the checkpoints.

Thinking of Tommy brought a sharp twinge of pain to her chest, and suddenly there was a tart, bitter taste like greening gooseberries coating her mouth. Lucy thought of her dream, of Tommy's brains dripping against the pristine tablecloth and Glorfindel slitting his own throat in a spray of blood.

Suddenly and inextricably paranoid, Lucy looked behind them and to either side, searching for a flash of gold. There was none except for the glint of the royal guards' armor.

"Do you know what's going to happen to me now?" She asked Morwen, scuffing the soles of her feet against the stone floor. When she wobbled a bit with the movement, Anaduilin immediately tightened his hand against her back to keep her steady. Morwen kept her hands clenched in her dress as they walked, her gaze focused and towards the ground to make sure she didn't trip over the hem of her skirt.

"You aren't leaving." She said with finality. "Myself, I am not so sure. But you? You will never leave. These Noldor, I do not think they will forget what you did."

"Are they going to kill me?" Lucy asked conversationally, looking at a nearby exit as they passed by. It was guarded, like all the others, but this time by Maeglin's gaolers.

"No." Morwen said, shaking her head. "They need someone to translate your scrolls. But you are a child, yes? Even if they didn't need your help, they would not wish to harm you. I think they are looking for another option to keeping you here. Something safe, that will not put the rest of the city in danger."

"I am not dangerous." Lucy said, without irony. Morwen seemed to choke on her words in shock.

"You disappeared and then you came back, and your clothes were burning and your eyes were red. You were crying **blood**. You disappeared because you told Lord Glorfindel about the balrogs."

"Are my eyes still red?" Lucy asked, curiously. She reached up to gently pad at the skin around her eyes. She hadn't seen herself in a mirror in months. Morwen shook her head.

"No."

"I met the balrogs." Lucy continued, completely forgetting the King's rule of do-not-mention-the-future-for-fear-of-transporting. "That's why I was burnt. Glorfindel forgot to kill one of them."

Morwen looked up at this. Her profile was elegant in the low light, but unlike their first meeting the woman was more subdued; less animated, as Limbrethil had been, and older looking. It convinced Lucy even more than something was going on above.

"The Lord Glorfindel, he wishes to see you." Morwen said.

Lucy was repulsed by this idea, and suddenly she was glaring at the shadows again with renewed paranoia. She let her distaste show upon her face.

"I don't want to speak to Rapunzel."

Morwen's expression was one of confusion. "Rapunzel?" She asked, mangling the sound of the foreign word. Lucy gestured absently to her own head.

"You know, his hair. He has long hair, and it's blond. Like Rapunzel's."

"This Rapunzel, I do not know what it is."

"Rapunzel is a princess."

"The Lord Glorfindel is not a princess. And I do not think he is a prince, either, at least I have not been told as such. He is a soldier, though. The Captain of the City Guard. They say he is very brave and very kind. He is worried about you."

"I don't care. I still don't want to talk to him." Lucy declared, scuffing her foot so violently against the ground she stubbed her toe and lost her balance. Anaduilin quickly leaned forward and righted her, keeping his hand on her arm. "I want to see Tommy." Lucy added. "I was supposed to see her body. When can I see the body?"

Morwen shrugged.

"I do not know." She admitted. "Things have changed."

There was no more talk of Glorfindel or Tommy, for which Lucy was grateful. They soon finished their lap of the dungeon, which had been boring and wholly uneventful. Morwen seemed ready to call it a day, but Lucy had been stationary for so long that she was desperate to move, even if it was only in circles. She couldn't shake the feeling that something was amiss, building like a slow building tremor inside her bones that made her limbs all jittery. If Anaduilin was displeased over having to do another lap, he did not show it, his expression remaining blank and his hand steady against her back as he let Lucy walk about the dungeons a second time.

Halfway through, just as they were passing a large set of stairs, they ran into Maeglin. He appeared out of the darkness like a living shadow, all silky black hair and big black eyes and snow white skin that was so reminiscent of Lucy's dream that she almost asked him where he'd placed his tea cup.

Maeglin stopped short upon seeing Lucy in the hallway, his lips twisting into a grimace of distaste. He turned to look at Anaduilin, snapping out a question in a harsh tone that made it clear that he was very displeased with the warden. Lucy turned to Morwen, who was watching the conversation in silence as Anaduilin answered.

"What did he ask him?" She said.

"He wants to know why you are out of your cell." Morwen replied in a hushed tone.

Lucy turned back to eye Maeglin with interest, and suddenly she was struck with the urge to say something very stupid. She knew it was stupid, but she didn't care. She couldn't help herself. The dark-haired ellon was too easy a target.

"Maeglin." She said plaintively, taking a step forward and reaching out to tug on the edge of his tunic. "Maeglin, I have to talk to you."

"Lucy!" Morwen said in a hissing whisper, looking horrified. "Lucy, stop it!"

Maeglin grit his teeth and closed his eyes briefly as Lucy touched him, never stopping in his conversation as he gently – but very firmly – reached down and gripped Lucy's hands in his own, removing them from his shirt and pushing her back. His jaw was tensed, his gaze purposely averted from hers, his entire body stiff like a board. When he tried to disentangle his hands from hers Lucy kept a death grip on his fingers, refusing to be parted from him.

"Maeglin, pay attention." Lucy demanded. He looked wholly uncomfortable with her proximity. Every time Lucy said Maeglin's name, the ellon's right ear would visibly twitch, just the slightest bit like a nervous tick. Anaduilin was glaring mightily at Lucy now, but he made no move towards her in front of his lord. Morwen seemed ready to die from embarrassment.

Lucy was thrilled. Maeglin was so easy a target that she was actually **enjoying **herself.

And then she saw it; the flash of gold just around the corner, up the stairs from where Maeglin had emerged. The gold that she had been dreading for days and weeks. Suddenly her paranoia was back full force.

Quickly Lucy stepped out of view from the stairs, trying to drag Maeglin with her. He didn't budge.

"Maeglin, mellon nîn!" Glorfindel called out, before there was a slight commotion on the stairs. Lucy heard the telltale sound of the royal guards moving forward to cut him off. Dutifully the elf lord stopped, and Lucy listened with trepidation as he talked to the guards. His tone was musical but slightly clipped with impatience. Anaduilin had no reaction to Glorfindel's sudden appearance except to blink languidly, then look to his lord for instructions. Maeglin gave none, jaw tense and eyes closed again as if fighting off a building headache.

In that moment, Lucy didn't care that Tommy had hated Maeglin. Tommy wasn't here anymore, and Lucy had to look out for herself. She tugged on Maeglin's hand.

"Hide me." She said, trying to get his attention. Maeglin opened his eyes, looking down at Lucy before briefly glancing up the stairwell towards where Glorfindel stood. He turned back to Anaduilin, speaking quietly to his warden.

"Tell him." Lucy said to Morwen, refusing to let go of Maeglin's hands when he tried to extricate himself from her grasp a second time. "Tell him I'm feeling sick. Tell him I want to go back to my cell."

Morwen seemed confused and slightly perturbed by Lucy's insistence, but translated the words all the same. When she did so, Maeglin looked at Lucy, his attention finally focused on her, but Lucy was so adverse to the thought of seeing Glorfindel that she forgot to muster up her characteristic doll-face when she pleaded with him. The guards in the hallway finally let Glorfindel pass. Lucy could hear the elf lord striding down the steps. All he would have to do was come down the stairs and turn the corner, and he would see her.

"Maeglin?" The golden elf lord called out again, a slight note of confusion to his voice when Maeglin didn't turn towards him. Lucy gripped Maeglin's hand.

"Please." She whispered. She knew Glorfindel could probably hear her, but she didn't care. "Hide me."

A moment passed. A moment where Lucy looked at Maeglin and Maeglin looked at Lucy, and they understood each other despite the language barrier, because they were the same in many ways. Quietly, the dark-haired ellon turned to Anaduilin, saying something that caused Morwen to let out a startled huff. Then he stepped back, taking a quick look at Lucy before turning to stride up the stairs and greet Glorfindel.

Anaduilin picked Lucy up without a word, carrying back to her cell. Lucy wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder. Behind them echoing softly through the hallway, she could hear Glorfindel's voice as he greeted Maeglin, clear and musical and lilting.

When they arrived at the cell Anaduilin set Lucy down on the bed and reattached her chain. Lucy was so grateful to be away from Glorfindel that she didn't even care that she was right back where she started. After the warden left she buried herself beneath the covers, huddling into a ball so tight her bandages chaffed against her still-healing back, but she didn't care. Glorfindel was underfoot, always underfoot, and he was getting closer.

Later, her door creaked open. Lucy immediately tensed up, curling into a ball. When she heard a soft, flat voice speaking to the guards, the words spoken with a bit of drawl, Lucy realized it was Maeglin and visibly relaxed. Through ways she was not quite certain of, Maeglin managed to convince all but two of the guards to leave them alone, and after they did so he walked over to her stone cot resting in the center of the room. Lucy didn't poke her head out from under the covers until she felt him sit down on the bed beside her, and even then it was only her face.

The ellon was sitting at the foot of her bed, but facing outward, staring blankly at the wall with his arms resting on his knees and his lovely white hands clasped together. His back was slightly hunched, and his hair was drawn over one shoulder, leaving his neck and one of his ears exposed. Maeglin's ears were longer and more delicately pointed than most of the Noldor, and even though his shoulders were broad, Lucy could see the bumps and indentations of his spine. With a dull sort of surprise she realized just how slender he was.

The ellon was as tall as the other elf lords, and he had a face like them – the same straight nose, the same heavy-lidded eyes – but his bone structure was markedly different. He almost reminded her of Anaduilin.

_Is he even Noldo? _Lucy wondered suddenly. The thought hadn't occurred to her before, mostly because Maeglin was an elf lord and this was a Noldor city, but now she was curious.

Slowly Lucy shuffled upwards on her bed, wrapping her blankets around her like a cocoon as she scooting forward until she was sitting beside him, shoulder to shoulder. There was still the fear there - the distant fear of contagious rot, of something ugly that she knew was lurking beneath his lovely facade - but it was muted now, tempered by greater concerns and Maeglin's occasional awkwardness. Lucy drew her knees drawn up to her chin and rested her head on top.

"Thank you, for today." She said. Lucy was not used to saying thank you to anyone, not even Tommy, but she meant it this time around. Maeglin said nothing, but turned his head to look at her nonetheless, his long hair twisting over his shoulder. Lucy looked back. They were very close like this, but not uncomfortably so, and sitting as she was Lucy was somewhat startled – once again – by the extreme length of his eyelashes. It seemed strange, compared to what she had seen from the other elves.

"I think we should declare a truce." Lucy said abruptly, somewhat forgetting that she had been the one to start their fight in the first place. Things were different now, however. Maeglin was not so distant and cold, and Tommy was no longer there. Lucy also had Glorfindel to worry about, and Maeglin – Maeglin controlled the dungeons, and was the nephew to the King. He was a gatekeeper, of sorts. He had privileges the other elves didn't. The more she thought about it, the more Lucy liked the idea.

"I'm not supposed to like you. Tommy hates you, but Tommy's dead. I need a new friend. We should be friends. Our insides match."

Maeglin didn't react to this, as Lucy expected, but she was undeterred. When she set her mind to something – which was rarely, if ever – nothing could dissuade her. Her focus became downright obsessive.

"Friends." She repeated as Maeglin stared at her blankly, radiating a detached sort of calm. He looked like he hadn't been sleeping. Without really thinking the gesture through, one of Lucy's hands snaked out from underneath her covers to reach down and grab his own, pulling his hands apart to hook their little fingers together.

It was a childish gesture, a gesture brought on from her formative years with Tommy, but Lucy had a hard time distinguishing the past from the present anyways, so she didn't care.

Maeglin watched her as she completed the movement, remaining docile throughout. Afterwards he stared at their entwined fingers for a moment, before looking up. His brow was furrowed with confusion, his pale lips pursed. His expression struck Lucy as awkward and painfully familiar. She knew the signs. The little twitches and tells in body language, the stilted speech and stiffened limbs. She was bad at making friends too. The only friend she had had for years was Tommy.

Lucy felt a slight twinge of sympathy for him, but pushed it aside. It felt too strange to feel sympathy for Maeglin.

"Friends." Lucy repeated. "We should be friends. We're the same."

He still didn't understand. Lucy thought back, wracking her brain for some way to communicate, and in a flash of clarity she remembered a conversation she'd had with Morwen, just before Anaduilin had taken her to the council chamber all those weeks ago.

"Maeglin, mellon nîn." She declared, slightly stumbling over the elvish word. Maeglin's expression became not so blank. Lucy watched as he looked down at their conjoined hands, his eyes widening. She squeezed her pinky finger around his in confirmation. "Mellon nîn." She repeated, giving him a slight, awkward smile that was little more than a twitch of the upper lip. Maeglin looked up, his eyes meeting hers. A change came over him.

For a brief moment the hunger was there, and Lucy saw it; that insatiable, ravenous hunger for something **more** that lurked just beneath the placid surface, the one she had seen on him when they had first met almost two months ago. Then the look was gone as quickly as it had come, and in its place was a soft sort of awkwardness, complete with shifting eyes and twitchy movements as Maeglin quickly searched for something else to focus on. There was the slightest tint of pink to his cheeks.

"Oh." He said hoarsely, clearing his throat and swallowing visibly as he looked away, black hair falling in a curtain down one side of his face. Lucy kept staring at him. A moment later, she felt his little finger squeeze around hers: a sign of acknowledgement. Lucy hummed a mindless tune, but said nothing, closing her eyes and swaying slightly as she rested her head on her knees.

She didn't expect Maeglin to speak to her, nor did she want him to, and when the ellon let go to turn his palm over, re-gripping her hand and entwining their fingers completely, Lucy let him. It was an awkward fit, his hand much bigger than hers, but surprisingly natural. His skin was just as smooth and dry as Lucy remembered it.

They sat like that, shoulder to shoulder, for the next several hours in companionable silence.

* * *

**Author's Note**

Another chapter? Another update? Yes. I did not forget my promise!

This chapter is a good example of what I mean when I say I let the character's actions write themselves. Full disclosure: I had planned on killing Maeglin two chapters ago. Second full disclosure: even I don't know what's going to happen next. It's a runaway train of destiny, folks, and Lucy's driving. We're all doomed.

A huge thank you to all you who reviewed/favorited/followed. I'm so happy that you guys are enjoying this, and even though I can't update as often as I'd like, I will try my best. There's been a couple guest reviews for the previous chapters that I haven't responded to yet, but I just wanted to let you guys know that I've read your reviews, and to thank you so much for kind words. Mongoosegirl, I'm completely flattered that this is your favorite story. That's incredibly high praise, and I will do my best to try and live up to it. Mellon, I'm glad the characters come off as imperfect. Imperfect characters are the best kind of characters, so its good to know I've managed to get that across on some level.

I've also been asked a question through PM that I think should be brought up here, and while the user didn't want me to single them out, they agreed to let me post the answer. Over half the readers of this story are from overseas (hi Norway/Sweden/Germany/Poland/France!), and the reviewer wanted to know why I was putting the emphasis on "English" vs. Sindarin in some of the chapters. It's a valid criticism, and in no way was the English meant to be exclusionary. It's simply because I'm writing in English, and I needed a literary shorthand to get across the idea of a language barrier within the story. If I was writing in French, for example, Lucy would be speaking French. Hopefully that makes sense in context.

* * *

**Glossary**

Baw – _No_

Havant en. Na maer – _Sit still. Be good_

Maeglin, mellon nîn – _Maeglin, my friend_


	9. The Inevitable

Chapter IX: The Inevitable

* * *

Almost two weeks passed, and in that time avoiding Glorfindel became all but impossible.

He was persistent. Hopelessly, single-mindedly persistent, and during the first week Lucy tried using every single excuse she could think of in an effort to avoid him, all to no avail. She was still healing, she told Anaduilin. She was sick and she didn't have the energy to talk, so she couldn't have any visitors. The King had the final say over who was able to see her and who wasn't – although Maeglin seemed to flit around this rule easily enough – so when Turgon came to visit Lucy later on in the week, she was more than ready to plead her case with him.

There were several other elf lords that accompanied the King when he arrived, along with a nervous-looking ellon who appeared to be some sort of scribe. Maeglin was amongst them, as well as the elf lord with the pale blue eyes that had given him sympathetic looks all throughout the council meeting. He was rather short for an elf, his skin sallow and his navy blue robes embroidered with delicate patterns of silver. Morwen introduced him as Salgant, Lord of the House of the Harp. The fourth elf lord to join them arrived later on, over halfway through the meeting. He was tall and broad shouldered with a patrician face, his sable colored hair hanging loose in the same fashion as the King's. Morwen said his name was Egalmoth, and the robes he wore were decorated with something akin to snake scales that turned iridescent hues in the light.

Lucy thought the ellon looked like a less severe, rainbow colored version of Turgon.

When they arrived the elf lords sat before her in a single row of four, with royal guards standing on either side. Morwen and the scribe were seated just behind them. The questions they asked Lucy were the same as those that had been asked in the council chamber, only they were more specific and notably absent of any mention of Sauron, Silmarils, or Fëanorians. The King inquired about Lucy's full name and how to spell it; what the name of her traveling companion had been, the full name of her parents and any extended family members that might still be living, however unlikely. Some of the questions they asked were even more mundane than that, ranging from queries about Lucy's favorite activities – which they called "pastimes" – to any allergies she had in relation to food, or dietary preferences.

Lucy told them that she had no hobbies and she hated chocolate, but that she could sing. They asked her to, and Lucy did so for a brief moment. The elf lords seemed to greatly enjoy this, and for the first time since they had met, Turgon graced Lucy with a smile. Maeglin wrung his hands in his lap and lowered his gaze, refusing to look at her. For the most part Lucy ignored his reserved behavior. The King continued on with the questioning.

Egalmoth seemed to be just as important as the Noldo prince, and many times he asked Lucy a question directly. Turgon did not appear to mind this in the slightest. Salgant stayed silent, only once or twice leaning over to whisper something to the scribe. Maeglin still wouldn't meet Lucy's gaze; he was so pale his blush was noticeable even in the low light, and at one point Salgant cast a knowing look towards the King's nephew, before his attention flickered briefly over to Lucy.

Abruptly, the King apologized, saying that council business had kept Glorfindel away. Lucy immediately stiffened all over and fought the urge to hide beneath her covers. Turgon, misinterpreting Lucy's rigid posture, assured her that the missing elf lord would return shortly. He asked Lucy if she would like to speak to Glorfindel, as he very much wanted to speak with her. Lucy said "no" and blamed her reluctance on "The Books", but beyond that she didn't give a reason.

The King was too leery about setting off another chain of events, so he accepted Lucy's request without complaint and eventually left the room, once again accompanied by the elf lords. Maeglin left with them, but not before lifting his head and catching Lucy's eye.

When Lucy met his gaze, he quickly turned and all but fled the premises. Lucy was grateful for the relative silence.

After, she was left alone and saw no more of the elf lords, blond-haired or otherwise. It was just Morwen and she, and Anaduilin as well when Lucy went for her walks. Lucy would have liked to keep it that way, except that Glorfindel was difficult to escape from and impossible to ignore. She learned that his current absence from the dungeons was only a temporary reprieve.

The Lord of the Golden Flower was very busy, she was told by Morwen. All the elves were busy, as things were going badly for them in the war. The older woman wasn't permitted to tell her the specifics, as Lucy was all but condemned for being an agent of darkness, but Morwen did divulge that while Gondolin was relatively safe, the elves were dying by the thousands. One of their cities had recently been sacked - although "recent" seemed to be a nebulous term when it came to the elves - and refugees were fleeing south into Sindar territory.

There **had** been an incident a few years back that had brought the Noldor some hope. Morwen didn't know much about it, but it had something to do with an elf named Lúthien and a man called Beren, along with a Silmaril they had stolen from Morgoth. Unfortunately during that time, one of the Noldo princes had also been lost: an elf by the name of Finrod. It had been a horrible loss, and the Noldor had yet to recover.

Gondolin was mostly cut off from the outside world, and the surrounding areas past the city's borders were overrun with orcs and goblins. As such, Turgon hadn't heard from the High King in quite some time, and was terribly worried about his older brother. Glorfindel – along with the other elf lords – had their civic duties increased. The ellon was apparently in charge of a great swath of the city's defenses, which was why Lucy always saw him in his armor.

The King's decree dissuaded Glorfindel from visiting somewhat, but not enough. Lucy had nowhere to hide from him, as she was still confined to the dungeons. When he wasn't patrolling the borders or fortifying Gondolin, the ellon was making his way down to the subterranean layers beneath the city to try and speak with her. He was so single-minded in his focus that Lucy knew it was only a matter of time before he stopped listening to Turgon altogether and searched her out in earnest.

_I shouldn't have told him_, Lucy decided after berating herself for several hours one day. _I shouldn't have said anything_. She was sure her admission about the balrogs had made the elf lord even more determined to speak with her. Lucy liked her walks, but Glorfindel had the uncanny habit of emerging out of nowhere whenever she ventured past her cell. It was only through quick thinking on Anaduilin's part and a plethora of guards that Lucy managed to evade him long enough to return to her room and pretend to be too tired to see him.

Unfortunately, Glorfindel was so persistent that soon Lucy was forced to stop walking altogether. When she did so, Maeglin came to visit her.

He hadn't been to see Lucy on his own volition since he had sat on her bed, and when he arrived it was in a forcefully casual way, with him sending her sideways glances and overtly clinging to the shadows. Maeglin made sure to stay out of arm's reach, eying Lucy from beneath his oddly long eyelashes. Stripped of the self-important, distant attitude he had worn around himself like a cloak when they first met, the elf lord was socially awkward. Lucy could tell just by looking at him that being in situations where he had no experience made Maeglin especially nervous, to the point of being defensive. It contrasted sharply with his physical appearance.

Maeglin was accompanied by Morwen, ostensibly to have her translate. Lucy sat on her bed, huddled beneath the blankets as she methodically ripped off the loose threads that were dangling from the hem of her nightgown.

"The Lord Maeglin, he wishes to know why you are not out for your walk." Morwen said. "The King has decreed that your health must return. Maeglin had given Anaduilin permission to take you outside your room for such, but the warden says you have been refusing to move as of late."

"I don't want to." Lucy said, avoiding their gaze. She wasn't lying per say, nor was it an omission of truth. She simply didn't want to say Glorfindel's name aloud, as saying it seemed to be somewhat of a curse. The minute Lucy started talking about him, Glorfindel would inextricably show up, like a fish drawn forward on a lure. She was so sick of having the ellon emerge from the shadows that she was close to snapping.

Morwen didn't question this answer herself, but Maeglin eyed Lucy with a visible scowl, as if her lack of cooperation was a personal insult. A moment late he turned to Morwen, speaking to her in his soft, drawling tone as he waved her out of the room. Morwen left, albeit reluctantly, turning back just before she disappeared into the hallway to glance at Lucy. The door was shut noisily behind her.

With Morwen gone, Maeglin moved to crouch in front of her. The guards were still in the room so he didn't touch her, although his gaze shifted to Lucy's hands more than once to watch the way that she played with the edge of her nightgown. Every time he did so, his cheeks would flush a little deeper. Maeglin's big black eyes were hungry again, and very calculating, but the hunger only seemed to last a minute.

Eventually he spoke. "Glorfindel?" He asked. Tommy had always said he was smart.

Lucy frowned and glanced at him sideways, fiddling even harder with the hem of her shift. She nodded once in confirmation. Maeglin didn't sigh, or say anything else to indicate that he understood or cared one way or another, but a moment later he stood to his full height, stepping backwards. Without another word he turned and left the room. He didn't return.

Later, Anaduilin came back to her cell, accompanied once more by Morwen. Lucy was told in no uncertain terms that it was time for her walk, and she had no say in matter. It was important that she got better.

"The Lord Maeglin, he says you do not need to worry about walking anymore." Morwen assured her. "The path is clear."

There was something ominous about the way that the statement was worded that Lucy couldn't quite put her finger on. Maeglin was true to his word, though, and the path was clear. There was no Glorfindel that day, or the day after that, or the one that followed either. When Lucy decided to finally ask why, Morwen said that Maeglin had found some area in Gondolin's borders that was weak and in need of inspection. He had recommended to his uncle that several of the elf lords should be sent out to oversee it, and Glorfindel had been among the first to be chosen.

Briefly, Lucy was reminded of one of her first impressions of Maeglin, where she had thought him the type to kill his enemies no matter how petty the disagreement. Out of a perverse sort of fascination, she asked if Maeglin had ever been in a fight with Glorfindel. Morwen repeated this question to Anaduilin, and after conversing briefly with the silver-haired warden she turned to Lucy and shook her head.

"No. The Lord Maeglin, he is very young, but he is smart and well mannered, and the other lords are fond of him. He and the Lord Glorfindel, they are distant with one another, but this is to be expected, yes? They are from different places."

"Where's Maeglin from?" Lucy asked, genuinely curious. From what Morwen had told her the city was closed, and no one was allowed to enter or exit.

"Nan Elmoth. It is Sindar territory."

Lucy filed this information away to mull over later, but said nothing in the moment. She enjoyed her walks and the reprieve Maeglin had bought her, but like all things in the dungeon it wasn't to last.

On the eleventh day, Glorfindel finally returned from the borders.

* * *

The day started off normally enough, which is to say Lucy woke up cranky, Limbrethil was mothering, and Morwen was far too talkative. Lucy had been feeling better the day before, and while she still walked with a limp and was always chilled, the air no longer hurt her lungs and she had been feeling stronger and more awake that ever.

She hadn't seen Glorfindel for a good four days, and even though Lucy no longer had access to Tommy's books, she had been filled with a sense of purpose. Not long after the King had visited, she had figured out the general layout of the dungeons. The cell-block itself was fairly simple, at least until one got to the stairs. There, the entire complex turned into an impenetrable labyrinth full of false turns and twisting corridors that looped back in on itself. The ravine was just beneath her feet and to the north of Lucy's cell, and two days prior Morwen had let it slip that the waterway supposedly dipped down into a network of nearby caves that eventually led out into the mountains.

The natural corridor was dangerous and inaccessible from the city itself, as the two weren't connected, but it existed. Lucy didn't know what to do with this knowledge yet, but it still made her determined and hopeful for the future. Unfortunately for her, she had woken up feeling incredibly ill the next morning. Immediately Lucy knew she was in for a fresh round of migraines, as all the signs were there.

The weather had been changing slowly over the past several months, although down in the dungeons this change was nearly imperceptible. The sudden shift in air pressure that signaled the tell-tale transition from spring to summer made Lucy feel tired and achy all over. There was a sharp, shooting pain low in her forehead, and the nerves behind her eyes were throbbing. Even the smallest among of light was unbearable. Lucy hadn't wanted to get up, but Limbrethil had shaken her awake regardless. None of her quietly murmured protests had been heeded.

Lucy was rather listless for most of the morning, sitting still on the edge of her cot as she nibbling on a biscuit while Limbrethil redressed her bandages and brushed the tangles out of her hair. Lucy's hair had grown even longer over the past several months. In the low light of the dungeon it turned a deep chocolate brown in color, brushed into a sheen by Limbrethil's attentions and curling into soft, heavy loops at the end.

Morwen sat at the foot of the bed, watching them both with a speculative gaze. She was braiding three thick strands of yarn together; the woman seemed to have taken up the idle task over the past several days in an effort to keep her hands busy.

"You have lovely hair, Sweetness." She told Lucy, her voice deceptively light. "You are lucky that Limbrethil is here to help you. You should take better care of it."

Morwen's own dark hair was drawn back, as per usual, and mostly hidden. Lucy – who was already feeling ill and ill tempered – did not mince her words. Her tone was more caustic than normal.

"I'm stuck in a dungeon." She mumbled through her biscuit. "What does it matter?"

Morwen shrugged, but glanced at Limbrethil sideways while speaking. When she did so, her words were half-conspiratorial.

"Elves like pretty things." She said slowly. "It is good to be pretty here."

"I don't care what elves like." Lucy snapped back.

"You should." Morwen warned on a drawl. "You are their prisoner, after all."

Limbrethil eventually left once Lucy was taken care of, and Morwen sat with her for a short while before Anaduilin arrived at Lucy's cell to escort her on one of her walks. Lucy didn't mind the circuit, even if it was boring, but today she was feeling weaker than she had been in weeks. When she stood, she swayed, her hand automatically reaching out to grasp Anaduilin's sleeve.

Lucy gripped the fabric between her fingers and closed her eyes, willing the world to stop spinning. It didn't. Anaduilin gripped her arm in return. He questioned Morwen in a mellow, dulcet tone that left little clue as to what he thought, but Morwen's translation was answer enough.

"Anaduilin, he wishes to know if you are well enough to walk." The woman said.

Lucy didn't want to walk, but at the moment she didn't want to stay in her cell, either. She didn't really know **what** she wanted, beyond wanting to close her eyes, and it left her feeling all twisted and anxious inside.

"I can't walk all the way." She said eventually, not taking her hand off Anaduilin's arm. "Just part of it." Anaduilin gave a slight nod in understanding when Morwen translated this, and he let Lucy keep her hand on his forearm. Morwen shot her a worried glance but said nothing, slipping her braid of yarn into her pocket and folding her hands into the voluminous length of her sleeves as she stepped towards the door.

Lucy and Anaduilin followed behind her. Once they were in the hallway, two guards fell into step on either side of them, moving in silence except for the occasional rustle of their chain mail. The walk was uneventful, as without Glorfindel there to make a mess of things there was really no one about to disturb them. Lucy moved slowly, her joints aching and her head pounding with the increase in noise that permeated the hallway. All of her senses felt amplified, her eardrums throbbing with the pressure. Anaduilin moved closer, resting his slim hand again her lower back to keep her steady. Lucy was sure he was doing it for efficiency's sake and not for sympathy, but she appreciated the gesture regardless.

"Where's Maeglin?" She asked Morwen, her voice slightly hoarse. She didn't really care where he was, but she felt like she should inquire about him all the same. Maeglin was the tiniest bit more accommodating when she inquired about his well-being. Word always seemed to trickle back to him, and Lucy was sure it was through Anaduilin.

Morwen shrugged, then gave a small, rueful sort of smile. "Somewhere." She said. "Doing lordly things. Noldor things." There was a hint of humor to her voice, although it was strained.

"Oh." Said Lucy, not really wanting to talk about much else. Her head hurt too much, and there was a strange, twisting feeling beneath her breastbone that was beginning to make her worry. It felt familiar – the same sort of sensation that Lucy had felt just before Morwen's face had melted into a wraith's, where there had been the incident in the council chamber.

Morwen seemed to recognize Lucy's need for silence, so she spoke no more, wrapping her arms around her middle to bury her hands in the thick folds of her dress. Her slipper-clad feet padded softly against the floor. Lucy glanced at the woman sideways, the weight of Anaduilin's hand comforting and familiar against her back. Morwen was looking straight ahead. The torchlight flickered eerily over the planes of her face, turning the hue of her skin a rich golden color. The low light of the corridor became her.

The three of them completed the rest of the circuit in silence. On their way back, when they were passing by a junction between two corridors, one of Maeglin's guards came striding out of the adjacent hallway towards them.

The guard did not seem to be anyone important, but he nearly sprinted up to Anaduilin as he placed his gloved hand on the warden's shoulder, leaning forward to whisper something in the Sinda's ear. Anaduilin leaned forward in return to listen better, his posture relaxed, but when Lucy looked up, craning her neck to catch a glimpse of his face, it was to see the ellon's expression slowly darken.

Soon after, Anaduilin was biting the inside of his cheek as he exchanged a visibly perturbed look with the guard. Whatever the gaoler had said didn't seem to be good. The guard retreated, running back down the hallway the same way he came. Anaduilin turned to Morwen, handing Lucy over to the woman with a delicate shifting of hands that left his fingers sliding across Lucy's side in an uncomfortably ticklish manner.

When the ellon spoke to the older woman, his tone was still soft, but there was a terse sort of quality to it.

Lucy didn't understand much of what was being said, but she had been around the elves long enough now that she could recognize one or two words. She picked up the elvish meaning for "her", along with something that vaguely translated to "seeing." Morwen's expression grew grimmer the more the warden talked, and by the end of it she had her arm wrapped around Lucy's back, her hand gripping her shoulder. Anaduilin cast a single inscrutable glance in Lucy's direction before disappearing down the adjacent hallway, moving in the same direction as the gaoler.

Lucy was left standing in the middle of the corridor, alone with Morwen and the guards. Lucy wasn't supposed to be left behind. Anaduilin was supposed to stay with her at all times when she was out of her cell, and everyone knew this.

"Where did he go?" Lucy asked, her voice turned into a croak from the strain of her growing migraine. She didn't really care where Anaduilin had gone, but she knew he wasn't supposed to have disappeared, and that twisting feeling beneath her breastbone was growing. The gaolers on either side of them shifted nervously, their chain mail rustling softly with the movement. The area was illuminated by the glow of their torches, but the light was so low that Lucy could not see more than ten paces in either direction. The other hallway that Anaduilin had fled down was completely hidden in shadows. All four of them were waiting in the junction between the two corridors.

Morwen smiled in an anxious manner, her free hand reaching over to grip Lucy's hand in hers. The other rubbed up and down her white-clad shoulder in comfort.

"There is an altercation somewhere in the dungeons above us, yes? Anaduilin, he says he must deal with it. He has no other choice."

This did not assuage Lucy's fears at all. Anaduilin never left her. Anaduilin was **predictable**. "Why?" She asked, horribly apprehensive. Morwen's lips were pursed before she spoke.

"The guard," She said, seeming to struggle to find the words. "He says… he says he saw something."

Lucy eyed the darkness around them with a new sense of foreboding. The gaolers beside them stayed still. There was no breeze in the corridor. No movement, save for the flickering light of the torches, and no sound except for the soft rustle of the gaolers' armor and roar of the ravine echoing beneath them. The scream of the silence was deafening, and Lucy was struck with the sudden, inexplicable need to go back to her cell. Something was wrong. She should have listened to the twisting feeling beneath her breastbone, and she hadn't.

"I want to go back." She said, reaching up with a shaky hand to rub at her eyes. They hurt something awful under the light, even though it was minimal. "Take me back to my cell."

Morwen turned to face her. Lucy felt the woman's hand rubbing up and down against her too-thin arm, before moving back to her shoulder to massage it in clockwise circles.

"We will go back soon, Sweetness. You understand, yes?" She said softly. "We just have to wait for Anaduilin. The warden, we cannot move unless he is here. The guards need his order. He will not be long."

"We need to go now." Lucy insisted. Morwen's hand stilled against her shoulder.

"Sweetness, we cannot leave without Anaduilin –"

"It's here." Lucy choked out in a warbling tone. She didn't now what _It_ was, but suddenly "it" seemed like the best word to describe the sensation. Lucy could feel it; the horrible clenching, that twisting beneath her breastbone. The inescapable feeling that something was wrong. _It_ was getting closer. "We need to go."

Morwen's mood changed. "Is it –" She began. "That is to say, the time before –" Lucy nodded numbly, her hand still covering her eyes.

"Oh." Said Morwen, her tone flat-lining as her fingers dug into Lucy's arm. Lucy could sense her sudden panic. "I – oh. One minute, Sweetness. One minute. I will talk to the guards."

Morwen drifted away from her to speak to the gaolers waiting several paces away. Lucy stood there swaying, listening to the roar of the ravine. Morwen hadn't gone far, no more than two feet, but Lucy felt naked and alone. She looked up, her eyes searching for the woman instinctively. Briefly, her gaze passed over the adjacent hallway before immediately backtracking, her heart jump-starting beneath her breast.

There was something large and white and with limbs like rubber waiting in the shadows. It was clinging upside down to the ceiling.

It was big, this skeletal creature with disjointed limbs that dangled above, staying perfectly still as it watched Lucy and the elves standing there like open targets in the middle of the hallway. The creature's head was twisted all the way around so it was looking right side up, it's shiny skull bald as an egg. There were no eyes, and it had two slits for nostrils; its rubbery lips pulled back to show rows of anglerfish teeth.

The creature seemed to draw in several short breaths. A second later it cocked its head in Lucy's direction, as if realizing she was watching.

Lucy wanted to scream, but didn't. She wanted to run, but she couldn't seem to do that either. The creature scuttled backwards across the ceiling like a giant albino crab to disappear into the darkness. All of its movements were done in silence.

None of the elves had seemed to notice, and Lucy's heart felt like it would burst out of her chest it was beating so rapidly. Her hands started shaking. There was a warm, wet feeling against her lips and chin, the faint scent of iron and a delicate _pattering_ sound echoing along the hallway. Slowly, Lucy looked down to see blood dripping down the front of her nightgown. She didn't reach up to touch her face to see where it was coming from, as she could feel it. Her nose was bleeding profusely.

"Morwen." She said shakily. When the woman didn't respond, she raised her voice, keeping her gaze studiously trained to the floor. She was terrified of looking at the shadows. "**Morwen**."

Morwen turned and let out a gasp. Immediately the guards became animated. One of them drew their sword.

"Oh, Sweetness! What happened?" Morwen exclaimed, rushing forward, using her own sleeve to try and stop the flow of blood.

"I saw it." Lucy said, her hands shaking. "It was here." Morwen gripped her hands to still the tremors. When she translated Lucy's words to the gaolers, the farthest one went running off down the corridor to find Anaduilin. The other moved closer so they were huddled together, his torch held aloft as he stared fixedly into the gloom. Lucy stood there shaking, shivering all over as her nightgown fell down her shoulder. Morwen wiped at her face again and again, but the blood just kept coming.

Lucy was starting to feel dizzy. The twisting sensation beneath her breastbone hadn't left her.

"I didn't say anything." Lucy told Morwen through chattering teeth. It felt important that she stated it, because she really **hadn't** said anything this time around. She'd been good. "I was quiet. You heard me. I didn't do it."

"I know, Sweetness." Morwen said, wadding up the train of her sleeve and holding it against Lucy's nose. "It's alright." It wasn't, but Lucy was glad that Morwen said it. The statement made her feel a little less alone.

A few minutes later, Anaduilin reappeared, moving faster than Lucy had seen him do in quite some time. His expression was tense, his jaw clenching noticeably. In a single fluid motion he picked Lucy up off her feet and carried her back to her cell. She let him do so without complaint, immediately curling up into a ball on the bed beneath the covers the minute they were back in the room.

The guards outside the cell were doubled, and extra torches were lit as elves bustled about in the corridor. Anaduilin's actions were hurried but methodical as he lifted Lucy's leg to reattach the manacle. Morwen watched nervously from the side of the cot, ripping a strip of fabric off the thinnest blanket and wadding it up to place it against Lucy's nose. Lucy held the rag to her face, lying on her side and swamped with dizziness. The bleeding was receding, but not fast enough. The minute Anaduilin was done with her, he stood and left, locking the door and leaving Morwen and Lucy trapped inside the room. One of Lucy's gaolers began pacing about the chamber, his hand clenching reflexively around the grip of his sword.

Lucy huddled deeper beneath the blankets, her nose congested and head pounding. In her mind's eye she could still see the creature scuttling backwards across the ceiling.

"Where is Anaduilin going?" She asked, her voice thick. Morwen looked pale. The woman swallowed nervously, speaking loudly to fill the silence.

"They are doing a search of the dungeons, yes? Something – something, I do not know what, but before they left, one of the guards said he saw something strange in the dungeons. There has never been a breach of Gondolin before. Not once. The city is well protected, yes? All elven cities are." Morwen nodded absently, as if trying to convince herself. "If there is a breach, they will find it. But we are safe here. We are always safe with the elves. These elves are Noldor, yes? Noldor are good at fighting wars. Good at killing. Everyone says so."

Lucy didn't comment on this, just like she didn't say anything else about the creature she had seen in the corridor. She knew instinctively that if she started talking about it, bad things would happen. It was that feeling again – that feeling she had gotten in the council chamber. Her head hurt so badly that Lucy didn't know if it was from her migraine or something else. She needed silence. Without the silence, she couldn't concentrate. But Morwen – Morwen talked when she was nervous, and in that moment she was very much so, sitting rigidly on the edge of the cot.

She was picking at her nails obsessively, her right hand shaking slightly more than usual.

"Where I come from," Morwen said. "It is open, yes? Above ground, near the forest. You can see Eryn Galen along the horizon, and if one walks for a day and a half they will reach the edge of it. The northern edge, that is. I have never been to the south. There is danger there, you see, but it is open and you can run away if something comes to find you. There, you are not trapped underground, like one is in the dungeons."

"Morwen." Lucy said slowly, closing her eyes to try and combat the sensation of drumming against her skull. "I feel sick." Her voice was a hoarse croak, muffled by the rag she held against her nose. Lucy wanted to say that her head hurt – that Morwen's talking made it worse – but as per usual, she was unable to explain herself through words.

She heard the older woman shuffling around at the end of the bed, the rustle of her skirts shifting against the blankets as she scooted closer. Not long after, a gentle hand came to rest on Lucy's shoulder.

"Would you like me to call for Limbrethil?" Morwen asked. Her concern sounded genuine.

Lucy thought of the white thing clinging to the ceiling with limbs like rubber, its teeth sharp as needles, and shook her head. She immediately regretted the movement when her headache worsened.

"No." She whispered hoarsely. "It's just a migraine." She wanted to believe it was just a migraine. If she said anything else, Lucy was sure she was going to bring the wrath of some unnamed god down upon her.

"A _migraine_?" Morwen asked, her hand tensing slightly against Lucy's shoulder when there was the sudden clatter of something metallic in the hallway and an increase in noise from the guards.

"It's a bad headache." Lucy clarified. "They make me puke sometimes."

"Do they make you bleed as such?"

Lucy didn't have to open her eyes to know that Morwen was gesturing to her nose. She tried to fight back an anxious swell of nausea.

"No." She said, softly. Morwen was quiet, but not for long, as she was a creature of habit just as much as Lucy and was unable to silence herself when she was truly nervous.

"Is it related to Sauron?" The woman said. Lucy was too swamped by vertigo to shake her head. Her sinuses felt congested from the nosebleed.

"No, but my eyes hurt. I can't be around light. Noise hurts."

"That sounds like something the enemy would do." Morwen intoned. "To make one fearful of the light."

"I'm pretty sure it's just me." Lucy slurred into her rag, wishing to whatever Middle Earth gods were out there that Morwen would just be quiet.

Morwen's voice was consciously lowered when she spoke next, as if what she was about to say was a secret. Lucy couldn't see her, but she could hear the woman moving even closer on the cot until she was sitting near Lucy's head instead of by her hip.

"Sweetness, I must confess, I was much pleased when it was Sauron you mentioned when you first came here, and not Morgoth."

"Oh?" Said Lucy softly, not really caring. The twisting feeling beneath her breastbone was making her want to vomit. Morwen made a small humming sound in agreement.

"Sauron, he is an evil creature, yes? With wolves and werewolves and wargs and all sorts of monsters that he sends down from the north to hunt us. But these creatures, they are not Morgoth's creatures, you see. Morgoth, he has dragons. He has dragons and balrogs and fearsome beasts that we have no name for in our tongue. It is very unfortunate that the Noldor have his attentions. It is better to deal with Sauron, I am thinking. He is only Morgoth's lieutenant. It is dangerous, but more manageable."

"I'm tired, Morwen." Lucy managed to choke out, willing the pounding in her head to go away. "The noise hurts. I need to sleep." She didn't want to talk about this. She wanted to be left alone and pretend the creature in the hallway had never existed. The bed felt like it was rocking beneath her, the vertigo was so severe.

"I am sorry, Sweetness." Morwen said, still speaking rapidly with a nervous tension, but softening her voice just enough so that Lucy could barely hear her over the constant echo of the ravine. "I am just… it is lonely for me here as well. And I am not so used to this, to being trapped underground." Morwen let out a little laugh that sounded slightly hysterical. "I want to go home." She choked.

Lucy felt guilty.

"I'm sorry you're stuck here." She told the older woman, and she meant it. Briefly, Lucy opened her eyes to watch her. Morwen smiled sadly, her hands clenching nervously in her lap before she went back to picking at her nails.

"It's not your fault, Sweetness." Morwen said. "It is just the way of things, you see? Us mortals, we must stick together. We mean little to the Noldor, I am thinking."

Lucy agreed with her wholeheartedly.

It was an awkward, anxious sort of silence that followed, with Lucy huddled beneath the blankets as she held the rag to her nose. Morwen perched on the edge of the bed, alternating between picking her nails and looking anxiously towards the door whenever there was the slightest increase in sound. Although Lucy couldn't smell anything because of her congested nose, there was a noticeable chill in the air. Goosebumps prickled along her arms beneath her sleeves, a series of shivers running up and down her spine before a cooling sensation settled between her shoulder blades. She curled her toes inwards and drew her legs up to her chest for warmth.

Lucy lay like that for a time, hunching inwards and drifting in and out of sleep, but sometime later she felt the familiar prickling sensation that signaled that someone was watching her. Not long after, there was a commotion at the door; the rustle of fabric brushing against armor, the gentle murmur of elves talking. Immediately Lucy recognized one of the voices.

_Oh no. Not now._

"Ai, what is he doing here?" Morwen said in a hissing whisper. There was exasperation there, but also a note of concern. "The King, he has told him no again and again. I know it as such. The guards, I would have thought they would call for the Lord Maeglin –"

The latch clanged as it was abruptly unlocked, the door creaking loudly as it swung open. Lucy heard the rustle of skirts as Morwen rose to greet the visitor. She burrowed her way deeper under the blankets and didn't look up. Lucy knew who it was. His presence was like a searing burn across her skin that hurt whenever he got nearer.

Morwen's footsteps were soft as she stepped away from the cot. "Hîr nín, ci heriabad." Lucy heard her say. Her tone was polite, but firm.

"Mana raeg?" Glorfindel asked. Even though Lucy was hiding beneath the covers, his voice rang clear across the room, rich and lilting as he spoke. He had an incredibly expressive voice for an elf, and Lucy could tell just by listening to him that he was perturbed and confused by whatever was going on in the hallway.

_Maybe you should lead him to it, _a nasty little voice sounded inside her head. _Take him to the creature, and let it kill him._ Lucy banished the thought. She was feeling too ill, and her fear of the shadows was stronger than her dislike of the elf lord. She hunched down deeper under the covers and buried her face into the pillow, blood-stained rag and all. Out of all the elves that had come to annoy her, and on all days, it had to be **him**. He was a constant reminder of Tommy.

Lucy heard the tap of his leather boots as he strode towards her. Desperately, she wished the ellon was still out patrolling the borders. She wasn't ready to deal with him.

"My Lord." Morwen began in English, before seeming to realize her mistake and abruptly switching to elvish. "Hîr nín, daro." Glorfindel wasn't listening, though. He was still moving forward, and Morwen had no rank in this place to tell him otherwise.

There was the sensation of someone standing very close to her; the feeling of a large hand coming down, gentle but firm as it fell upon her shoulder. Lucy flinched under the contact. Glorfindel immediately flinched in return, withdrawing his hand in such a way that it almost seemed like Lucy's rejection had burned him.

"He teitha au." He said, sounding confused and almost hurt. In the hallway, there was another slight commotion. Lucy heard the patter of a gaoler's feet as he ran past, his chain mail jangling around him.

Morwen moved to stand beside the elf lord, explaining something to him in softly spoken elvish. Glorfindel's response was thick with an emotion Lucy couldn't place. The hurt was more evident this time, making his words quick and choppy.

"Lucy, Sweetness." Morwen said a moment later, her tone full of false charm. "I know you are not feeling well, but I think it would be best if you came out. The Lord Glorfindel is here. He wishes to speak with you."

"I don't want to speak with him." Lucy's voice wavered slightly as she spoke. Morwen sighed.

"Lucy, he is just worried about you, Sweetness. He means you no harm." She paused, and when she spoke again her voice was noticeably darker than it had been before. "Please." She said in a terse whisper. "I do not wish to make this day any worse than it already is. Anaduilin, he is still missing."

"I don't care." Lucy said, her voice rising into a piteous warble. "Send him away!"

To her credit, Morwen did try to do this. She explained something to the ellon in a flowery, pacifying tone, but it did absolutely nothing to deter the elf lord. When Glorfindel spoke again, he sounded upset. Lucy didn't know what he was saying, but she could pick out a few works as he conversed with Morwen in a rapid-fire manner. Something about "being confused," "no hurting," and "good."

Glorfindel leaned forward again, the gentle weight of his hand once again coming to rest on Lucy's shoulder. It was firmer this time. More confident.

"Lucy." Said Morwen, a bit more forcefully as a door was slammed somewhere outside the cell. There was a muted clanking sound as one of the gaolers turned and left the room, presumably to see to the source. "Lucy, I am not sure why you wish to remain as such, but I really do think you should speak to – ai! My Lord, Hîr nín!"

Glorfindel's slim hands curled around the edge of Lucy's blankets as he peeled the covers away from her face, cutting Morwen off mid-sentence. He made a soothing noise when Lucy cringed and moved away from him, his voice serene and meant to pacify.

There was the soft creaking of leather and the clinking of armor as he crouched beside her. A moment later, Lucy felt his hand on the side of her head, brushing back her hair to expose her face. He wasn't wearing any gloves. When his skin touched hers for the briefest of moments, Lucy felt flesh that was so smooth it was akin to heated marble.

"Lucy." He said softly. The sound of her name coming from his lips – slightly mangled by his accent, but uttered with an odd sort of familiarity and overwhelming warmth – caused a shudder to stir at the base of Lucy's throat. She swallowed convulsively, clenching the rag as she turned her head up from the pillow, glaring murderously at the elf lord. When she did so, Glorfindel made a wordless sound of sympathy as he saw her bloody nose.

There was a painful kind of intensity to Glorfindel's gaze, the blue of his irises slightly luminescent in the dark. The color of them appeared all the more vivid against the pallor of his skin. The ellon's long fingers briefly darted across Lucy's temple to carefully sweep a loose strand of hair out of her eyes; they felt like spider webs ghosting across her skin, insubstantial and barely touching, but overwhelmingly _present_ despite the delicate nature of his gesture.

"Lucy, cardh rîn nin?" He asked hesitantly. Some of his hair was pulled back in a messy knot that rested at the base of his neck, but like before there was just so much of it that most pooled in a wavy golden sheet all the way to the floor. When Lucy eyed him, Glorfindel smiled hopefully, but the gesture was fragile and tremulous. It wobbled, then fell into something sadder when Lucy didn't respond.

"Lucy, pedo. Lá." He pleaded. Lucy stayed silent. Glorfindel's expression fell further, his gaze darting rapidly to different parts of her face as if searching for something or trying to memorize it. When the elf lord reached out again to brush away another lock of her hair, his hand was shaking slightly.

Morwen leaned forward, trying to get the ellon's attention. She was eying the two of them with concern, her brow furrowed.

"Hîr nín, i ara candh ú anglenna." She said reproachfully. Glorfindel's hand fell away from Lucy's temple in a self-conscious manner, but even as he turned to speak to Morwen he seemed to forget himself. His retreating fingers instinctively grasped a lock of Lucy's hair. Glorfindel began nervously fiddling with the end of it, as if the gesture calmed him.

"Pednin man ilqua." He commanded.

Lucy watched the two of them converse, alternating between eying Glorfindel with growing malcontent and casting shifting glances towards the guards. They seem perturbed by Glorfindel's presence, but their focus was mostly on the commotion in the corridor and they didn't interfere. Anaduilin still hadn't returned.

There was a disheveled quality about Glorfindel's appearance that seemed odd for an elf, with his amour coated here and there in a fine layer of dust. A smudge of dirt had tracked its way across one of his high boned cheeks. The flyaway nature of the ellon's appearance made Glorfindel look young. Hopelessly, irrevocably young, and his open, expressive nature only seemed to heighten the effect.

In Tommy's books, the elf lord had died and then returned, but he was still older than most elves of the Third Age and wiser than all except for a few. This Glorfindel wasn't old. He was young and impulsive, and very, very impatient. Lucy felt a stab of jealously, twisting between her ribs. She could see why Tommy had loved him. Tommy loved beauty, and the elf lord was strikingly so in a way that made it hard to be around him. Lucy knew she would had never of stood a chance against him, and she hated him for it.

The truth was bitter and hard to swallow. Morwen and the elf lord kept talking.

Lucy tuned their conversation out for a time. She let her body sink into the covers, holding the rag across her nose as she tried to detach herself from her physical surroundings in order to combat her migraine. At one point, Morwen gestured in the general direction of Lucy's ankle as she talked. Glorfindel followed the movement with a heavy-lidded, sapphire-blue gaze. Moments later, Lucy felt a cool draft of air as he lifted the blanket, sliding the hem of her nightgown away from her ankle in order to get a better look at the manacle.

The gesture was devoid of shame and seemingly without thought: almost automatic, as if he had done something like it before. Glorfindel's fingers were warm against her ankle, his touch practiced and overly familiar. He eyed the device with a frown. Immediately Lucy drew back from his hand, letting out a hiss of displeasure and hiding her foot self-consciously beneath her. Only then did the ellon seem to realize what he was doing.

He startled visibly, his lips parted and eyes wide in surprise. The elf lord made a visible effort to compose himself, but like before he had barely withdrawn before he was reaching for Lucy again; latching on to the ends of her hair with his porcelain fingers like he didn't know how to stop. Glorfindel turned to speak to Morwen, simultaneously toying with the strands of Lucy's hair. Lucy was struck with the distinct impression that he didn't even realize that he was doing it.

Morwen was eying the two of them blatantly now, a frown on her face. Her gaze was sharp and calculating.

The woman's next response to Glorfindel were short and clipped, the elf lord's voice rising slightly in return. They seemed to be arguing about something. The guards watched but did not interfere, although Lucy supposed that even if they wanted to, they wouldn't have been allowed. Glorfindel outranked everyone in the room and then some, and his prestige was obvious in the way the other elves were almost deferential around him, despite their allegiance to another house.

There seemed to be a lull in the conversation, and Glorfindel stood and left the room. The minute he did so, the gaolers shut the door behind him with a _bang. _Morwen approached Lucy, her hands folded briefly in front of her before she reached out to readjust Lucy's blankets. Her expression was displeased and frosty.

"Where do you know him from?" She asked. Something had changed in her tone; there was an edge to it that Lucy had never heard before. Lucy let her head sink into the pillow, drawing the rag away from her nose to check the bleeding before repositioning it. She stared at Morwen sluggishly.

"I don't know him." She said, speaking through a nasally sounding cough. "I don't want him touching me. Don't let him back in."

Morwen's words were icy as she sat on the edge of Lucy's bed and folded her hands neatly in her lap. Her body language was rigid and guarded.

"He seems to know you very well."

"He's lying. Whatever he told you, he's lying. Keep him out."

"Sweetness, he is a bit too friendly with you, even for a Noldo. Before, you told me that you knew him –"

"I meant from Tommy's **books**!" Lucy said, cutting Morwen off as she anticipated her question. There was an edge of hysteria to her voice, and she couldn't hide it. "I don't know him. I don't know him and I don't want him here! You keep him away from me!"

Morwen had no authority over this, however, and a moment later the door slammed back open. Like a fish drawn forward on a lure at the sound of his name, Glorfindel returned.

He hurried into the room in a swirl of gold and ivory, fiddling with something between his pretty porcelain hands that jangled like a set of keys. When he approached the bed, Lucy saw that he **was** carrying a set of keys. There was a quiet look of determination on his face, his brow slightly furrowed. As he bounded up the last few steps to Lucy's bed it became obvious what he intended to do.

Morwen's mouth fell open into an _o_. She stood up, trying to cut him off. Her words were slightly rushed as she raised her hands, attempting to placate him. Glorfindel deftly sidestepped her, kneeling beside Lucy's bed and ripping aside the covers.

"Oh, I – my Lord, my Lord, Hîr nín –" Morwen began, switching to Sindarin halfway through. "Hîr nín_,_ baw, lá daro –"

Glorfindel remained quiet but utterly focused. Lucy shrank away from him when he pulled aside the covers, scrambling backwards, but the elf lord had already grabbed her chain, dragging her foot forward to meet his hand.

"Shh," He crooned as Lucy let out an involuntary whimper and tried to twist away, his hand wrapping all the way around her ankle as his other fiddled with the manacle. "Ná varna."

He was bigger than Maeglin. Far bigger than Anaduilin, and even though the elf lord's grip was gentle his fingers were locked like iron around her leg. The sudden realization of just how vulnerable she was – that she actually couldn't escape him – was absolutely terrifying. Lucy tried kicking him, but Glorfindel easily ducked his head, avoiding her foot as he brought forth the key. Lucy's panicked whimpering got louder.

"My Lord, **stop it**." Morwen snapped, hovering beside the elf lord's shoulder. "You are scaring her!" Her hands fluttered nervously for a moment before she was speaking to him in elvish again, reaching down in a sudden fit of bravery to grasp his arm to try and pull him away. Glorfindel ignored the older woman. His expression had grown blanker the more he concentrated on the task, and Lucy's hysteria was mounting. The guards still didn't interfere, although one of them strode from the room, presumably to get someone of higher rank that could talk him out of it.

"No." Morwen insisted as Lucy whimpered and Glorfindel grasped her heel, adjusting the manacle to insert the key. "No, he isn't supposed to – we don't have permission to – My Lord, Hîr nín_,_ daro!"

The key made a soft click as it was inserted into the lock and twisted, and the second the manacle fell open Glorfindel tossed it aside and pocketed the key. Before Lucy could scramble away, Glorfindel had gathered her up from the bed and into his arms, blankets and all, quickly standing as he strode towards the door. He left the room, taking Lucy with him.

Morwen let out a shout, grasping her skirt as she hurried behind them, trying to keep up and begging Glorfindel to stop. Lucy struggled at first, trying to make him put her down, but her migraine was torturous and the world was reeling from vertigo. The minute they stepped into the hallway, that twisting feeling beneath her breastbone intensified. Lucy couldn't see the creature, but she knew it was there somewhere in the dungeons, scuttling across the ceiling. She collapsed against Glorfindel's shoulder, overwhelmed by the feeling of wrongness.

_This shouldn't be happening_, something was telling her. _This didn't happen. This is wrong.  
_

The ellon adjusted Lucy to sit more easily in his arms, mistaking her limpness for acquiescence. By the time Maeglin or any of the other elf lords realized she was missing, Glorfindel had already absconded with Lucy from the dungeons.

* * *

**Author's Note**

Apologies to everyone for the delay on this chapter. It's longer than usual, but I couldn't find an area where I could make a clean break in the narrative, so I decided to post it as is. I'll try to update soon, but I have a comic deadline coming up which I **have** to make, so there might be a noticeable lag in posting. (Like a week or two, maybe. I hope not.)

Thank you to everyone who reviewed/favorited/followed. As always, it's wonderful that you guys are enjoying this. For guest reviewer Mellon: I can't tell you that without giving away the next several chapters! Suffice to say, both Maeglin's hunger and Glorfindel's interest are related to the demonstrable fact that First Age elves were actually pretty messed up (for a whole host of reasons). It's that imperfect characterization we were talking about.

* * *

**Glossary**

One of these days, when I have the time and this story is finished, I'm going to go back and fix all the Sindarin. Until then, the standard bad grammar warning applies.

Hîr nín, ci heriabad – _My Lord, you must go_

Mana raeg – _What is wrong_

Hîr nín, daro – _My Lord, stop_

He teitha au – _She draws away (Quenya)_

Lucy, cardh rîn nin – _Lucy, do you remember me_

Lucy, pedo. Lá – _Lucy, speak. Please (Quenya)_

Hîr nín, i ara candh ú anglenna – _My Lord, the King ordered you not to approach_

Pednin man ilqua – _Tell me everything (Quenya)_

Hîr nín_,_ baw, lá daro –_ My lord, no, please stop_

Ná varna –_ It is safe (Quenya)_


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